SEOUL - A 31-YEAR-OLD North Korean defector has surrendered to the authorities after smuggling herself into South Korea, police said on Wednesday.
The woman, who had lived in China after fleeing her homeland in 1997, reached South Korea on a cargo ship from China, and voluntarily appeared at a police station in Seoul on Monday, police said.
She is now under questioning by security officials, they said, without disclosing details.
Increasing numbers of North Koreans are fleeing hunger and poverty in their homeland, with the vast majority travelling overland to neighbouring China.
They risk forced repatriation if caught there and often travel on to Southeast Asia in hopes of eventual resettlement in South Korea or the West.
In all, 15,057 North Koreans have come to South Korea since the end of the war in 1953, most of them in recent years, according to the unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations. -- AFP
