SEOUL, July 13 (Reuters) – On Monday morning, the South Korean navy announced that they had found the body of a seaman who went missing at sea over the weekend, close to the maritime border with North Korea.
The navy was involved in a search and rescue operation after the seaman disappeared from a patrol vessel operating off South Korea's eastern coast. They located him approximately 52 km (32 miles) east of the coast.
The navy did not provide details about how the seaman went missing.
South Korea has reached out to North Korea for assistance and to discuss the return of the seaman, in case he drifted over the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the maritime border.
The military forces of the two Koreas are in a tense standoff along both the sea and land borders, which were established after the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.
In 2020, a fisheries ministry official drifted into North Korean waters after going missing from a patrol vessel on the west coast and was killed by North Korean troops.
North Korea later issued a rare apology for that event. Relations between the two countries have become increasingly hostile in recent years, with Pyongyang cutting off all communication lines with the South.