SEOUL — The man who crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea is believed to be a previous defector from the North to South Korea.

       South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Monday that the man, who was seen crawling up a barbed-wire fence on the eastern side of the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, is believed to be a North Korean in his early 30s who entered South Korea in November 2020 through the same area as he left. Defections to North Korea are extremely rare.

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       “The authorities in charge are examining relevant details,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

       The man, who managed to evade the South Korean military’s searches for hours until reaching the North late Saturday, surmounted a 10-foot-high barbed-wire fence to make it through the heavily guarded border, according to local news reports, citing government sources.

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       The man, upon arriving in South Korea, told intelligence officials in Seoul that he used to be a gymnast in North Korea and demonstrated his jumping skills in front of them, according to the news reports.

       The South Korean government said it notified North Korea of the man’s crossing to ensure his safety. The North confirmed that the notification had been received but did not give any response about his safety, a South Korean defense official said on Monday, briefing reporters under the condition of anonymity.

       The official said the border crosser is not likely to be a spy for North Korea but added that authorities are still investigating that possibility.

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       Some 33,800 North Koreans have fled to the South since the early 1990s to escape poverty and political oppression. Most of them make their way to South Korea through China, and crossings through the fortified DMZ are rare. The narrow strip is the most heavily armed borderland in the world, with minefields and barbed-wire fences.

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       It is even rarer for the defectors who settled in the South to cross the DMZ back into the North.

       But this is not the first time: In July 2020, a 24-year-old North Korean defector who had been living in the South swam across a river back to his hometown in the North. Later that month, North Korean authorities locked down the city of Kaesong, saying the person who returned from the South displayed covid-19 symptoms and possibly spread the virus in the region.

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       Two months later, a South Korean fisheries official who went missing near the two countries’ disputed maritime border was fatally shot by North Korean military personnel. North Korea issued a rare apology at the time, saying the shooting death was a defensive measure to prevent any coronavirus outbreak.

       The border crossings, though only a handful have occurred over the past years, raised alarms in South Korea over security lapses around the border area.

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       South Korean troops guarding the border failed to immediately detect the crossing Saturday, though it was later found to have been captured in surveillance footage.

       More than a dozen South Korean military personnel have been dispatched to the site of the crossing to investigate details of the incident, said Kim Jun-rak, spokesman for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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