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Video shows North Korean soldier's daring, bullet-ridden defection to South

Watch a North Korean soldier race across the border into South Korea on Nov. 13.
A surveillance TV footage containing the moment of defection of a North Korean soldier, is seen during a press briefing by the United Nations Command at the Defence Ministry in Seoul on November 22, 2017.

The U.S.-led United Nations Command that helps police the Korean War armistice released closed-circuit television footage Wednesday that shows a North Korean soldier's daring defection amid a hail of bullets to South Korea.

The video shows the soldier racing toward the border in a military vehicle. After it crashes, he leaps out of the jeep and continues to escape on foot as North Korean border guards open fire in his direction. Later, the fleeing soldier is seen collapsed on the ground near a wall just south of the border area that separates the two Koreas. South Korean security forces then drag him to safety.

The incident unfolded on Nov. 13 in the Joint Security Area, the 2 1/2-mile -wide Demilitarized Zone that has been the de facto border between North and South Korea since the 1950-1953 Korea War. The defector was shot at least four times and critically wounded. He was airlifted to a South Korean hospital by a U.S. military helicopter. Doctors said Wednesday he had regained consciousness and was "fine."

The entire sequence depicted in the video lasts about four minutes.

The soldier's identity and rank were not released. Surgeons treating his wounds said they removed parasites from his ruptured small intestine, including presumed roundworms as long as 10.6 inches, which may reflect poor nutrition and health in the North's military. The soldier is 5 feet, 7 inches tall but weighs just 132 pounds.

U.S. Col. Chad Carroll, a spokesman for the UN Command, told reporters in a live TV briefing Wednesday in Seoul that the North Korean soldiers who pursued the defector technically violated the terms of the armistice agreement ending the Korean War when they fired across and briefly physically crossed the border separating the two nations.

He said a meeting had been requested with the North’s military to discuss the violations. North Korea's government has yet to acknowledge the incident, which will be an embarrassment for Pyongyang because it claims all defections are the result of kidnapping or enticing North Koreans. Since the end of the Korean War, about 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea, mostly across the porous border with China.

The incident comes during a time of heightened tensions between North Korea and the international community over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

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