Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the peninsula was divided by war in the 1950s, but defections across the land border are relatively rare.

The incident comes after a North Korean soldier defected to the South by crossing the MDL in August last year. Also last year, another North Korean defected to the South across the de facto border in the Yellow Sea, arriving on Gyodong Island off the peninsula’s west coast near the border between the Koreas.