SEOUL - A NORTH Korean on Tuesday crossed the heavily fortified inter-Korean border and defected to South Korea, the South's spy agency said.

The man passed through the Demilitarised Zone dividing the peninsula and reached a South Korean military guardpost, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said.

'The defector is in a good health. He is now under questioning by authorities,' an NIS spokesman told wires agencies.

The man told investigators he had decided to flee the North as he became 'sceptical' about its future and his own, she said, without giving details of how he managed to cross the border.

She refused to confirm a report by Yonhap news agency that the man was a soldier who had defected in Cheolweon county, some 120 km northeast of Seoul.

The last defection directly to the South was in June when a man and a woman crossed the western sea border by boat.

More than 14,000 North Koreans have escaped and resettled in the South since the end of the 1950-1953 war, with the number growing rapidly in recent years.

Virtually all cross the border to China but face repatriation if discovered there. Many travel on to Southeast Asia in the hope of eventually reaching Seoul. -- AFP