A "serial" North Korean defector has given a substantial U.S. and South Korean military presence the slip, stealing a 9-tonne fishing trawler to return to the impoverished North, the Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.
South Korea's Yonhap described the 28-year-old crab fisherman, identified only as Lee, as a "serial" defector who had made what appeared to be his fourth dash to the North.
It gave no explanation how he had managed to defect so many times, let alone how he had been able to avoid imprisonment in North Korea, which has ratcheted up tension on the peninsula with increasingly strident rhetoric in recent weeks.
Maybe it is time for his annual performance review, or something. Maybe he has information we want him to report back to Pyongyang. But it sure isn't because Lee is the Korean Houdini.
