Five North Koreans in a small boat crossed the sea border into South Korean waters Saturday, a Coast Guard official said, in an apparent bid to defect to the South. The five people, including four men and one woman, have expressed their wish to live in the South as defectors, the Yonhap news agency reported.
"Coast guards guided the boat to safety at (the eastern port of) Mukho," a South Korean coast guard official told AFP. Government authorities were questioning the five North Koreans, he added. The incident came after a North Korean fishing boat with eight people on board developed an engine trouble and drifted into South Korean waters off the country's eastern coast late last month.