Report Details Actions Taken By US Army Soldiers to Save the Life of North Korean Soldier Shot While Defecting to South Korea

The Stars & Stripes has a good read about the actions the American medical evacuation team took to save the life of the North Korean soldier who defected across the Joint Security Area and was shot five times by his comrades:

The crew had just returned to Camp Casey, a base near the heavily fortified frontier that divides the peninsula, after a more than three-hour training mission when radio operator Pfc. Karina Lopez told them to stand by for a real mission.

After initial confusion about whether the team was needed, Lopez got the call at 4:04 p.m., about an hour after events had begun to unfold, and the team took off five minutes later.

“That’s when I started … calling the hospital, trying to figure out which hospital they were going to take him to,” said the 20-year-old from Raleigh, N.C.

Singh and his teammates had only basic information that somebody had suffered a gunshot wound to the torso at the Joint Security Area. But that was enough for concern.

“I was in Iraq and Afghanistan … that’s what you expect there,” said Gumm, the 37-year-old pilot. “Here you’d expect a concussion or the other types of missions that we’ve had, not a gunshot wound to the torso. So it was surprising.”

It took about seven minutes to get to Camp Bonifas, the base near the JSA, where more than a dozen people met them carrying the wounded soldier on a stretcher in a chaotic scene.

“We had to kick some people out of the helicopter,” said crew chief Spc. Carroll Moore, 25, of Lenoir, N.C., adding there was only room for two escorts from the security battalion.

Singh, 39, of San Antonio, said he immediately spotted signs that a lung was in danger of collapsing so he did a needle chest decompression, with a 3.5-inch needle. He also worked to stop the blood from hemorrhaging.

The defector, who was in and out of consciousness, asked for water at one point, but Singh said he couldn’t have any because of the nature of his wounds.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the whole article at the link, but great job by everyone involved to save this defectors life.