A South Korean woman in her fifties has been shot dead by a North Korean soldier at Mt. Geumgang.
Park Wang Ja was shot in the chest and leg at 4:30 A.M. on the 11th in the vicinity of a swimming beach at the Mt. Geumgang Special Tourist Zone, Onjung-ri, North Kangwon Province. According to the South Korean authorities and Hyundai Asan, Ms. Park entered a military zone while taking a walk and a North Korean soldier immediately fired a warning shot followed by actually aimed shots. She died at 5 A.M.
North Korean authorities insist that “Ms. Park crossed a hedge and a soldier ordered her to stop. She did not stop but ran away, so the soldier shot her after firing several warning shots.”
However, there are difficulties understanding the incident based purely on the North’s statement. There are points of doubt: the site at which she died is just 200 meters from a swimming beach, the time of the incident was bright enough that a soldier would have been able to figure out she was an unarmed tourist, and so on.
South Korea must ensure that the case is investigated thoroughly.
South Must Investigate Shooting Incident Thoroughly
It is shocking news for South Koreans that a South Korean woman who simply wanted to look around the mountains and the coast of the North with sympathy born of a fatherland’s division was shot, all of sudden, by a North Korean soldier.
The South Korean government must therefore dispatch a fact-finding mission to the site and investigate the incident thoroughly.
This is not the first time that accidents have occurred in the North Korean tourist areas. In July 1999 Min Young Mee, a South Korean tourist, was detained in the North because she said to a North Korean guide that “I hope we unify soon and communicate with each other freely, and defectors Joen Cheol Woo and Kim Yong [who worked in the South as celebrities] are living very well in the South,” while she was looking around the Kooryong Falls. In June of 2007 a tourist bus rolled over, wounding six tourists, and in October of the same year the cable of a suspension bridge at Mr Geumgang valley broke and twenty tourists fell.
Investigation, censure and prevention measures were not thorough enough whenever incidents such as those came about. Now this gunshot incident happened.
The South Korean government should clarify where the responsibility lies and find out the truth about the incident. If the acts of the North Korean side were problematic, they must be charged with responsibility for the incident. This kind of tragedy must not be allowed to be repeated.
