South Korean Navy helps drifting North Korean ship

A South Korean patrol boat delivers drinking water and food to a North Korean ship that has been drifting at sea for 10 days.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) said on October 29 that its maritime surveillance aircraft detected an unidentified ship in the area off the country's east coast and dispatched a patrol boat to investigate the situation.

A South Korean naval vessel sails near a fishing boat off Yeonpyeong Island in 2013. Photo: AFP

According to the JSC, when the South Korean patrol ship approached, the people on the drifting ship waved a distress flag and the South Korean sailors confirmed that it was a North Korean ship. The crew on the North Korean ship said they had been drifting for 10 days and expressed their desire to return home.

JSC added that they requested to be provided with food and water and the South Korean side agreed for "humanitarian reasons".

"North Korea was also notified through the United Nations Command and the international maritime communication network to be able to rescue the distressed ship," the statement from the JSC said.

On October 24, four North Koreans on a wooden boat were spotted approaching South Korean waters near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto maritime border between South Korea and North Korea. Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed government source as saying the men had “expressed their intention to defect.”

North Korea has not responded to the information.

Since 1998, South Korea has recorded about 34,000 North Korean defectors. The number of new arrivals has been very low in the past three years as North Korean and Chinese authorities tightened border controls to prevent Covid-19, with 67 defectors last year.

Vu Hoang (According to AFP )

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