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Details Emerge About Defector at Center of N. Korea COVID Claims

William Gallo

   SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - South Korea has acknowledged that a North Korean
   defector, who had been accused of rapein the South, may have sneaked
   past South Korean border guards before apparently swimming back to his
   North Korean homeland.

   At a briefing Monday, South Korean military officials said they found
   the man's bag near a drainage ditch he apparently used to get under a
   barbed wire fence on the northeastern island of Ganghwa, which is
   separated from North Korea by a portion of the Han River Estuary.

   The 24-year-old, who fled North Korea in 2017, had recently been
   accused of raping another defector and was the subject of an arrest
   warrant in the South, according to South Korean media reports. He had
   also recently lost his job, the reports say.

   But South Korean health officials said the re-defector was not
   registered as a COVID-19 patient or as someone who hadcome in contact
   withinfected individuals.

   That undermines North Korea's accusation that the man may have brought
   the coronavirus into the communist country.

   Apparently referring to the same person, North Korean state media on
   Sunday said a "runaway" suspected to be carrying the coronavirus
   returned to the North on July 19th "after illegally crossing the
   demarcation line" that separates the two Koreas.

   It was the first time North Korea has acknowledged a possible
   coronavirus infection. North Korea has declared a state of emergency
   and imposed a lockdown around Kaesong City, the border town where the
   re-defector was found.

   Why admit it now?

   Even though 16 million coronavirus infections have been reported
   worldwide, North Korea had long insisted it was completely free of the
   virus - a claim most outside observers said was practically impossible.

   North Korea shares a 1,400-kilometer-long border with China, where the
   virus originated. Although the North formally closed its borders in
   February, much of its trade with China is informal and hard to control.

   Many analysts said North Korea may be using the incident to finally
   acknowledge a coronavirus outbreak, even while blaming South Korea.

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