South Korea asks North Korea to help find missing seaman
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- South Korea's unification ministry said on July 12 it is seeking North Korea's help to find a navy seaman who went missing during coast guard duty on the East Sea.
- The ministry said there is a possibility the seaman drifted north across the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the two Koreas, and asked Pyongyang to assist with the search and return on humanitarian grounds.
- The request was delivered via a text message to reporters because South Korea has no active communication line with the North, according to the ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs.
- The North Korean embassy in London did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on the appeal.
- President Lee Jae Myung's administration has sought to ease tensions with Pyongyang since taking office last year, but North Korea has rebuffed those overtures and declared South Korea a 'hostile nation' in 2024.
Why it matters: With no functioning inter-Korean communication channel, even a routine humanitarian search for a missing sailor now has to be routed through a public text message to reporters — a concrete illustration of how frozen the relationship remains despite the Lee administration's repeated overtures since last year.
