Many people complain about wearing mask outdoors, imagine having to wear an entire hazmat suit:
North Korean troops have become somewhat of a rare sight. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, North Korean soldiers have avoided showing themselves in public to ward off the disease, at the cost of suspending in-person talks with the U.N. Command about upholding the armistice.
Korea Times
“They no longer meet with us face to face,” said Lt. Col. Griff Hofman of the U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission behind the sky-blue conference huts at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom managed by the commission.
“It’s all done via the hotline, and they generally stay in Panmungak,” he said, referring to the main building on the North Korean side of the area that is also known as the Phanmun Pavilion. “If North Korean troops needed to go outdoors, they wore hazmat suits.”
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Fortunately this did not lead to a bigger incident:
A South Korean soldier has mistakenly fired a machine gun during training near the border with North Korea, and the military has immediately informed North Korea that the shooting was not intentional, military officials said Sunday.
The South Korean military said four live rounds were fired from the machine gun during a training session by an Army unit along the inter-Korean border in the eastern province of Gangwon at 6:27 p.m. on Saturday.
All of the bullets landed in the southern side of the Military Demarcation Line and no damage was reported. No firings were planned for the training.
The military unit immediately informed North Korea via broadcasting on several occasions that the firings were not intentional and stepped up emergency readiness posture, the officials said.
Yonhap
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