Five N Koreans sail across tense border to S Korea

SEOUL: Five North Koreans in a small boat crossed the sea border into South Korean waters on Saturday, a Coast Guard official said, in an apparent bid to defect to the South.

The five people, including four men and one woman, have expressed their wish to live in the South as defectors, the Yonhap news agency reported.

"Coast guards guided the boat to safety at the eastern port of Mukho," a South Korean coast guard official told AFP.

Government authorities were questioning the five North Koreans, he added. The incident came after a North Korean fishing boat with eight people on board developed an engine trouble and drifted into South Korean waters off the country’s eastern coast late last month.

Days later, South Korea repatriated all the eight, as they had requested.

Early last month, two people out of four crew members on another North Korean fishing boat which drifted to the South refused to return home. They were allowed resettle in the South.