Source:
International Herald TribuneBy Choe Sang-Hun Published: December 31, 2008
Seoul: Four North Koreans defected to South Korea by sea this week and the authorities in the South are questioning them, Seoul's intelligence agency said Wednesday. A spokesman for the spy agency, who spoke on the customary condition of anonymity, gave no further details. But Yonhap, South Korea's national news agency, reported that the defectors were a husband and wife, their son and daughter-in-law.
Yonhap, which cited no sources in its report, said the four North Koreans were in a small wooden boat when a patrol boat from the South Korean Navy picked them up Tuesday night. Escapes from North Korea through the heavily guarded land and sea borders between the two Koreas are uncommon. More than 14,000 people from the hunger-stricken North have defected to South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953, but most of the defectors have come through China.
On Oct. 28, a North Korean believed to be a soldier defected to South Korea, officials in Seoul said. The man apparently defected at a South Korean military guard post. At the time, the North's military was threatening an attack unless Seoul prevented anti-North Korean "provocations," including the sending of airborne leaflets into the Communist North.
In recent months, conservative activists in the South --- mainly North Korean defectors supported by Christian churches --- have been unleashing flghts of balloons carrying leaflets into the North. The leaflets harshly criticize the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and carry news about his alleged illness, a topic that is taboo in the North.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/31/asia/01korea.php
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