North Korean defector steals bus to drive back after struggle in South

A North Korean defector was arrested in South Korea after attempting to cross the heavily fortified border back into his country using a stolen bus.

The man, in his 30s, stole the vehicle from a garage in Paju, a city near the border, and made a desperate attempt to cross across the Unification Bridge that separates the two Koreas, before crashing into a barricade, authorities said.

The defector, who escaped from North Korea around a decade ago, reportedly told police he was struggling to adapt to life in South Korea and wanted to return to his homeland.

Surveillance footage from the garage shows the man, wearing a hat, trying to enter several vehicles in a Paju garage before he finally managed to get into a bus.

He drove off with the bus at approximately 1am local time on Tuesday (4pm GMT on Monday). When he reached the border he ignored soldiers who asked him to stop, and instead swerved into the opposite lane on the bridge.

Military border guards apprehended him after he crashed into a barricade about 30 minutes later.

The man was not found to have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the incident, local media reports say.

The defector, who left North Korea about a decade ago, had been working as a labourer. He was reportedly struggling financially having accumulated unpaid fines, and told police officers he wanted to reunite with his family in the North.

South Korea’s laws strictly prohibit crossing into North Korea without government authorisation, and violators face severe penalties, including up to 10 years in prison. North Korean defectors in the South are automatically granted citizenship.

Despite these deterrents, some defectors who have found it hard to assimilate in South Korea have tried to re-cross the border in the past.

While around 1,000 defectors flee North Korea for South Korea each year, a much smaller number – just 31 between 2012 and 2022 – have attempted to return to the North, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry​.

Doctors resume strike in India over ‘lack of action’ following rape case

Protesting junior doctors in India have resumed their indefinite strike demanding better security for healthcare professionals following the rape and killing of a resident doctor at a prominent state-run hospital.

The protests erupted after a trainee doctor, 31, was found dead on 9 August at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, the capital of the eastern state of West Bengal, during her 32-hour work shift. An autopsy confirmed sexual assault.

Thousands of people have staged protests every day in Kolkata since the murder demanding justice and better safety for healthcare workers. Doctors across the country joined the walkout, while smaller protests erupted in parts of India and other cities across the world.

The West Bengal Junior Doctors Association on Tuesday placed a 10-fold demand in the front of the state government, calling for justice for the victim and better safety for doctors, as they announced resumption of their strike.

The junior doctors had rejoined their duties at government hospitals in September after 42 days of cease-work protests.

“We do not see any positive approach from the state government to fulfill our demands for safety and security. Today is the 52nd day of the protest and we are still being attacked,” Aniket Mahato, one of the agitating junior doctors, told PTI news agency.

The announcement was made just days after doctors and nurses at another state-run hospital were assaulted by relatives of a patient after she died during treatment. At least six on-duty doctors and nurses were assaulted by a mob of around two dozen people following the 30-year-old patient’s death, the doctors alleged.

“Unless we see clear action from the state government on these demands, the ‘cease work’ will continue,” Mr Mahato added.

Other demands included appointing a new health secretary, creating task forces in medical colleges, deploying more women police in hospitals and investigating corruption in medical councils and recruitment boards.

The strike disrupted hospitals across the state, forcing patients to return from the emergency wards. The state health department said the senior doctors have been pressed into the inpatient and outpatient departments to compensate for the striking juniors.

The junior doctors also expressed their dissatisfaction over the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) “slow” probe into the rape and murder. The case was handed over to the federal investigative agency for transparency after the Kolkata police arrested a civic volunteer associated with the city police.

“We have seen many times before that the CBI has been unable to reach any conclusions, allowing the real culprits of such incidents to go free due to delays in filing charges,” the junior doctors forum said.

The medicos have called for a massive protest rally in Kolkata on Wednesday that coincided with the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and the beginning of the 10-day-long Hindu festival of Durga Puja.

Police officers jailed in first convictions over Korea’s Halloween stampede

A South Korean court has sentenced the former chief of a local police station to three years in prison for his failure to prevent the 2022 Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon that killed 159 people.

Lee Im-jae is the first senior police official of Seoul’s local Yongsan police station, which oversees safety in Itaewon, to be convicted for the tragedy, which the Seoul Western District Court deemed a “man-made disaster”.

Two other former police officials received lesser sentences. The court gave one officer a two-year prison sentence and handed a third a suspended two-year term. The three officers were found guilty of professional negligence leading to death.

Lee had failed to prepare for a mass Halloween gathering whose dangers he should have foreseen, thus creating the conditions for the Itaewon tragedy, the court said in a statement.

Outside the court, family members of the victims were seen crying after the sentencing.

The court said: “As the Yongsan Police Station was in charge of security for Yongsan District and therefore responsible on the day of the incident both for maintaining order on Halloween Day and preparing for large-scale demonstrations and assemblies that were scheduled to occur under their jurisdiction, they appear to have faced some limitations in terms of effectively operating their forces.”

The court also concluded that Lee had “failed to properly attend to his radio or was otherwise negligent”.

The victims, primarily in their twenties and thirties, were attending Halloween celebrations when a massive 100,000-plus crowd of revellers flocked to Itaewon, a metropolis known for its nightlife.

By 10.20pm local time, crowds had surged to unsafe numbers and the situation turned dire when people on a slope fell over, leading to a crush that trapped hundreds. Witnesses said the crowd surge caused “a hell-like” chaos as people fell on each other “like dominos”.

Following the tragedy, families demanded accountability from senior officials, including interior minister Lee Sang-min, though a parliamentary vote to impeach him was blocked by the constitutional court.

The crowd crush, one of South Korea’s largest peacetime disasters, triggered widespread national grief.

Lee’s lawyer told Yonhap news agency before the ruling that it was “excessively harsh” to expect his client to have prepared for an unforeseeable event.

The police officers and prosecutors have the option to appeal the decision.

While Lee was held accountable for failing to foresee and prepare for the gathering, other district officials, including Park Hee-young, who was the head of the Yongsan ward office, were acquitted. The court also acquitted three other ward officials besides Mr Park, saying that a ward office lacked the legal authority to control or disperse a crowd.

Prosecutors had sought seven-year prison sentences for both Mr Park and Lee.

The acquittal of Mr Park and the ward officials was met with criticism from bereaved family members. “Does this make sense? We can’t really accept this,” Lee Jeong-min, a representative of the families was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

In a statement issued after the court sentencing, the group comprising family members of the Halloween crush victims, called 10.29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families, insisted that the “large-scale tragedy would not have occurred if [the district office] had requested police security to control congestion, or if officials with the office had at least taken action to control crowds, including passage at intersections within the side streets”.

The statement added: “The court’s conclusion that there was ‘nothing the Yongsan District Office could have done’ is a case of succumbing to formal legal logic and using it as a basis for exonerating the defendants for their incompetence.”

Lee Jeong-min, whose daughter Lee Ju-yeong was among those who lost their lives, told The Hankyoreh Shinmun: “Where is the judicial system in this country?”

Last year, the Seoul metropolitan government introduced a range of new measures “to ensure a safe Halloween”, including the implementation of a new CCTV system to monitor crowd sizes.

In January this year, Seoul’s police chief, Kim Kwang-ho, was also charged with negligence related to the crowd crush.

Three killed and 15 hurt by man on knife rampage in Chinese Walmart

At least three people were killed and 15 others injured in a knife attack on Monday in a Walmart supermarket in Shanghai, China.

A 37-year-old man surnamed Lin was arrested at the scene as police responded to reports of a knife attack, the local Songjiang police branch said in a statement on Tuesday.

The attack happened on the eve of the week-long National Day holidays in a shopping mall in a suburban district southwest of Shanghai, China’s largest city and a major financial hub.

The suspect had come to Shanghai to “vent his anger due to a personal economic dispute”, police said.

At least 18 people were taken to hospital with injuries, out of which three later died.

The remaining injured people “did not sustain life-threatening wounds” and are not believed to be in danger, officials said.

Videos on Chinese social media showed a child was one of the victims of the stabbing spree along with several passers-by inside the supermarket. However, the videos and pictures appear to have been censored by the authorities on social media after the attack sparked an outpouring of anger.

It was the latest stabbing attack in China where firearms are banned. The country has seen a series of such rampages in recent months with several foreign nationals also injured or killed.

Last month, a 10-year-old Japanese student died after being stabbed near his school in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. This followed another knife attack at a school bus stop for a Japanese school in which a Chinese national who tried to save the child was killed.

In June, four US university instructors were attacked with a knife in a public park in the northeast city of Jilin.

In May, at least two people were killed and 21 injured after a stabbing attack at a hospital in south-west China.

The attack comes as China is marking the 75th year of Communist Party rule amid major economic challenges with no festivities announced for the occasion on Tuesday.

The world’s second largest economy is sluggish, missing its rather modest 5 per cent growth target. In July 2024, Chinese government data revealed GDP growth has declined below the government’s target.