The man aged in his 30s who had defected more than a decade ago told police that he was trying to return to North Korea after struggling to settle in the South, a report said

A North Korean defector living in South Korea was detained on Tuesday after ramming a stolen bus into a barricade on a bridge near the heavily militarized border, in an apparent attempt to get back to the North, Yonhap news agency reported.

The incident took place at around 1:30 a.m. (16:30 GMT on Monday) at the Tongil Bridge in Paju, northwest of the capital Seoul, after the man ignored warnings from soldiers guarding the bridge and attempted to drive through, Yonhap said, citing city police.

Paju police referred queries on the incident to provincial police authorities. The northern Gyeonggi police agency could not be reached for comment.

The man aged in his 30s who had defected more than a decade ago told police that he was trying to return to North Korea after struggling to settle in the South, the report said.

  • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    2 months ago

    Wow you sure saw through our clever deception. What tipped you off, was it when we slipped up and called it “Voice Of America”? I knew people were gonna catch that…

    • Count042English
      32·
      2 months ago

      Our?

      You would be surprised how few people are aware that VOA is propaganda. They think it is something like NPR.

      It is not.

      Good job in knowing something most people don’t?

      What’s with the sarcastic tone, again?

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I imagine that, if you sat down and asked people “Is voice of america propaganda” you would get a whole bunch of people saying “is it? I didn’t realize!”. People are dumb about applying specific definitions, and propaganda is largely viewed as the stuff that comes out of leaflet bombs, or that gets played on loudspeakers in dingy german factories that Captain America is about to blow up. But, if you asked “Is VOA Biased” 97% of people will say “well yeah, duh, its called ‘Voice of America’”.

        I truly do not believe your premise that there’s huge swathes of people unaware that “Voice of America” is biased towards American interests. People are dumb, but they aren’t so dumb as to be unable to read the damn name.

        • Count042English
          11·
          2 months ago

          The only response that deserves your previous sarcasm is this one. There is a difference between federally funded news programs like NPR, and outright propaganda outlet with no journalistic standards like the VOA, but I can’t believe you actually believe most people know that.

          But hey, I guess informing people of that deserves an asshole amount of sarcasm.

          • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            2 months ago

            My apologies, my initial comment was heavy-handed because I was writing with the apparent “lacks reading comprehension” demographic in mind, and I wanted to be sure they’d understand my scorn.

            Now onto the “please just stop” portion of this: I think you’re lacking some critical background here. VOA, though obviously incredibly biased from charter to name to office carpet, has a great deal of journalistic integrity. You can be a propaganda outlet and have a commitment to truthful reporting. If you want an example of that look to NPR, another openly biased news outlet, albeit one with a liberal-leaning bias towards the internal American issues it reports on most of the time. Both are propaganda, both do very good work reporting on US news and interests. That you don’t know enough about VOA to be aware of this speaks to the notion that maybe your understanding of the subject is not nearly as comprehensive as you seem to think.