SEOUL — A US soldier is believed to have been detained by North Korea after crossing the heavily fortified border — an incident likely to further aggravate Washington's troubled relations with the nuclear-armed state.
Hours later, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, according to the South Korean military — an apparent response to the first visit by an American nuclear-armed submarine to a South Korean port in decades.
The United Nations Command said he had been on a Joint Security Area orientation tour, adding that he was believed to be in North Korean custody and that it is working with Pyongyang's military to"resolve this incident". North and South Korea remain technically at war since the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, with a demilitarised zone running along the border.
Former US president Donald Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Panmunjom Truce Village in 2019 and even stood on North Korean soil by stepping across the demarcation line there. "I thought it was a bad joke at first but, when he didn't come back, I realised it wasn't a joke and then everybody reacted and things got crazy," they said.North Korea sealed its borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and has yet to reopen them. Its security presence on its side of the border at the JSA has also been scaled back significantly.
Seoul and Washington have ramped up defence cooperation in response, staging joint military exercises with advanced stealth jets and US strategic assets.The allies held the first Nuclear Consultative Group meeting in Seoul on Tuesday and announced an American nuclear submarine was making a port visit to Busan for the first time since 1981.
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