The Defense Ministry said Friday it will install more phone boxes and guidance signs along the heavily fortified border to help usher North Koreans wanting to defect to the South.
It was among a set of border security measures the ministry reported to the parliamentary defense committee amid a public outcry over the recent exposure of a gaping hole in border defense.
The military has been under fire, as it was completely in the dark that a North Korean soldier crossed the land border until he showed up and knocked on the doors at the barracks of a front-line unit on Oct. 2.
The military has become subject to ridicule, with media calling the case a “knock-knock defection.”
“Phones for defectors have been installed near barbed wires, but we will install a sufficient number (of phones) in the future,” a ministry official said.
It is not known how many defectors have used such phones during defections over the border.
The ministry earlier said it will strengthen border security by deploying more guards and installing advanced surveillance equipment and wire fences.
According to the parliamentary report, the ministry will shorten a three-year project to adopt a modern surveillance system on the frontier by one year and install infrared detectors, lights and cameras on the barbed wires across the border.
Front-line barracks will also cut down overgrown trees near the military demarcation line for the thermal observation devices to improve visibility and shorten soldiers‘ work shift to reduce fatigue, it showed.
The ministry said it will prepare a set of guidelines for a reporting system in case of emergency situations, the report said, after the defense chief acknowledged “apparent failures” in the situation-reporting system.
A total of 14 officers, including five at the general level, will face punishment for the border breach and false reporting to seniors. The ministry dismissed three officers, including the 22nd division commander, from their posts over the incident.
Although defection via land border has been considered rare, a total of three North Korean soldiers crossed the border for defection this year alone, including another soldier who killed two of his superiors before defecting to the South.
The two Koreas are divided by the demilitarized zone, a 259-kilometer strip of rugged no-man’s land stretching from coast to coast, with the presence of buried land mines and rows of barbed wires after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap News)
