• Asia North Korea publishes some epic tone Kim Jong-un equestrian photos
  • Armament: North Korea confirms the launch of a new missile from a submarine

The news jumped a few hours ago: two twenty-year-old North Korean captured when crossing the border with South Korea illegally. But this time they were not deserters fleeing Kim Jong-un's tight regime. His story went much further.

When the authorities interrogated them, they confessed that they were fishermen and that they had fled because they had murdered their 16 crewmates. They were immediately deported to the northern neighbor. It is the first time that South Korea deportes a North Korean citizen who has crossed its border since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

"The government decided to expel them because they had committed serious, non-political crimes, such as murder, and were not subject to our protection under the law," said Lee Sang-min, spokesman for the Unification Ministry. "If we had accepted them, they would represent a danger to the life and safety of our people, they are criminals who cannot be recognized as refugees under international law, " he concluded.

The fishermen were handed over to North Korean officials in the border village of Panmunjom, a demilitarized zone located between the two countries. South Korean researchers point out that on the ship, which left the port of Kimchaek in August and that worked near Russian waters, there were 19 people on board.

The Russians say that this year they had arrested more than 3,000 North Korean fishermen for fishing in their territorial waters, and that they had registered more than 1,500 vessels finding illegal catches of squid, crabs and sharks. But they had never heard a similar story.

The two young twenties, along with another partner, would have killed the captain first because "he had abused them," and then the rest of the crew so they wouldn't betray them. They were killed one by one and threw their bodies overboard.

The three assassins returned to the port of Kimchaek with the intention of fleeing to another region farther from their country but, when the police arrested one of them, the other two fled last week in the same boat across the border

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • South Korea
  • international

ScienceThe Greek tanker suspected of the black tide in Brazil reached its destination without fuel leakage, says the shipping company

Turkey Kurds accuse Turkey of bombing their positions on the border with Syria

Middle East An Iranian oil tanker suffers two impacts in the Red Sea