North Korean swims across to South Korea for 6 hours

A North Korean has managed to spend 6 hours swimming across South Korea. According to a South Korean official, it took the man six hours to swim across one of the world’s most heavily militarised borders.

The South Korean media and opposition have already criticized the incident for demonstrating the shortcomings of South Korea’s border control system.

Under his wetsuit, the swimmer had put on a padded jacket, which kept him warm and allowed him to float. A South Korean military source told Yonhap news agency that the tides had played in his favor.

In three hours, the swimmer had appeared on security cameras eight times, and an audible alarm had gone off twice. But the soldiers guarding the border failed to spot the swimmer.

When a search was launched, it took the soldiers three hours to discover the man, who had fallen asleep. The man in his twenties came ashore in Goseong, a town on the east coast.