BANGKOK – Thirteen Burmese people were killed Friday (Nov 24) when their van collided with a truck in central Thailand and burst into flames, police said, the latest gruesome accident on the kingdom’s notoriously dangerous roads.

The van was travelling from the border town of Mae Sot, a common entry point for Myanmar migrant workers, to Bangkok when it crashed into the 10-wheeler in Singburi province early Friday morning, said a local police officer.

“Authorities are still identifying (the victims) as their bodies were heavily burned,” the officer said, adding that the Thai driver was also killed in the accident.

Thailand’s roads are some of the most lethal in the region.

Around 24,000 people die on the kingdom’s roads each year, a figure well above the relatively prosperous country’s neighbours, according to data from the World Health Organisation.

While more than half of accidents involve motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, bus crashes involving migrant workers and other travellers are also common.

Earlier this month four Japanese tourists and their Thai guide were killed in Ayutthaya province when their van crashed into a truck and was engulfed by flames, leaving no survivors.

SEOUL – North Korea has reportedly replaced guards and fortified a section of its border with South Korea where a North Korean soldier staged a daring defection last week, while South Korean and US soldiers have been decorated for their role in his rescue.

The North Korean defector was shot and wounded by his fellow soldiers as he dashed into the South Korean side of the Joint Security Area (JSA) last week.

The South Korean and US soldiers who led a rescue attempt to drag the gravely injured soldier to safety have been awarded medals on Thursday (Nov 23), according to US Forces Korea.

A group of senior diplomats based in Seoul visited the JSA on Wednesday morning where they saw five North Korean workers digging a deep trench in the area where the soldier had dashed across the line after getting his jeep stuck in a small ditch, a member of the diplomatic delegation told Reuters on Friday.

In a photograph of the visit posted to the Twitter account of acting US ambassador to South Korea, Marc Knapper, North Korean workers could be seen using shovels to dig a deep trench on the North Korean side of the line as soldiers stood guard.

“The workers were being watched very closely by the KPA guards, not just the two in the photo, but others out of shot behind the building,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.

According to an intelligence official cited by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, the North has replaced the 35 to 40 soldiers it had guarding the JSA at the time of the incident.

“We’re closely monitoring the North Korean military’s movement in the JSA,” a South Korean defence ministry official told reporters, without confirming the reduction in border guards. “There are limits as to what we can say about things we know.”

Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports, although photos taken by Knapper and other diplomats of soldiers guarding the area where workers were digging the trench showed them dressed in slightly different uniforms to the ones usually worn by North Korea’s JSA guards.

Two new trees had also been planted in the small space between the ditch and the line with the South, the diplomat told Reuters, in an apparent effort to make it more difficult for would-be defectors to drive across the ground.

Meanwhile, in South Korea, US Forces Korea (USFK) said it had awarded its own JSA soldiers – three South Korean and three US soldiers – the Army Commendation medal in recognition for their efforts in rescuing the defector.

The medals were personally handed out by USFK Commander Vincent Brooks in a ceremony, according to USFK’s Facebook page.

The soldiers had been responsible for dragging the wounded North Korean soldier to safety in a daring rescue seen in security camera footage released by the United Nations Command earlier this week.

Pyongyang has not commented on the defection of its soldier, who is now in stable condition despite sustaining multiple injuries sustained from gunshot wounds to his arm and torso.

The young soldier, known only by his family name Oh, is a quiet, pleasant man who has nightmares about being returned to the North, his surgeon told Reuters on Thursday.

SEOUL – North Korea’s latest defector, a young soldier known only by his family name Oh, is a quiet, pleasant man who has nightmares about being returned to the North, his surgeon said on Thursday (Nov 23).

“He’s a pretty nice guy,” said lead surgeon John Cook Jong Lee, who has been operating and caring for the 24-year-old. Oh has become a focus of worldwide attention after he was badly wounded by fellow North Korean soldiers as he scrambled across the border in the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South on Nov 13.

Video of Oh’s escape released on Wednesday showed him stumbling over the border and being dragged unconscious through the undergrowth by South Korean troops.

Surgeon Lee has been almost the only person to speak with Oh since he arrived at the hospital, he told Reuters in an interview at his office at Ajou University Hospital, just a few floors away from where the defector lies guarded by South Korean special forces and intelligence officers.

The surgeon, who has hung a South Korean flag in the soldier’s room, said he is avoiding subjects that may disturb his patient.

Oh is eating his first “clear liquid” food such as broths, and can smile, talk, and use his hands, Lee said. But when his patient woke on Sunday he cried out in pain, and Lee said he is still anxious about the South Korean guards.

Lee said Oh told him that he had joined the North Korean army when he was 17, right after secondary school graduation.

The soldier’s hair is styled “like a jarhead, like a US Marine, so I actually joked ‘why don’t you join the South Korean Marines?’ He smiled and said that he would never ever go back to the military system again.”

Medical teams have worked for days to remove the shards of at least four bullets from Oh’s body, stitch up his shredded organs, and treat pre-existing conditions including tuberculosis, hepatitis B, and a case of massive intestinal worms, Lee said.

“He’s a quite strong man,” said Lee.

Since Oh’s defection, North Korea appeared to have replaced all its security guards on the border, an intelligence source in the South told Yonhap news agency on Thursday.

COLLAPSED LUNG

Lee said that when the defector arrived in an American military helicopter at the hospital – which is equipped with state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment and is used to treat VIP visitors such as visiting US presidents – he came with zero personal information.

On the flight in, American army flight medics had fought to keep Oh alive, jabbing a large needle into his chest to treat a collapsed lung.

Oh was immediately wheeled into a diagnostic room where doctors confirmed he was suffering from massive internal bleeding.

“We knew then that we didn’t have time to hesitate,” Lee said.

Two major surgeries were required to remove the bullets and patch Oh back together, and the medical team pumped as much as 12 litres of new blood into his body. The normal body has less than half as much blood.

“He told me that he is so thankful for South Koreans for saving his life and giving him that much blood,” Lee said.

Lee has been playing South Korean pop music and American films and TV shows for his patient, but has not exposed him to any news coverage.

Among the shows, Oh showed a liking for the French-American thriller “Transporter 3,” comedy “Bruce Almighty” starring Jim Carrey and Morgan Freeman; and the crime-solving TV series “CSI,” Lee said.

SCARS

Most North Korean defectors undergo security questioning by South Korea’s intelligence agency once they arrive in the South before being sent to a resettlement centre for a three-month education on life in the South.

After they are released, central and local governments provide 7 million won (S$8,600) in cash over a year, as well as support in housing, education and job training.

Police officers are assigned to each of the defectors to ensure their security and safety.

Even if Oh fully recovers, some scars will stay for the rest of his life, the surgeon said.

Among the longest lasting wounds will be the damage to his colon, which was shredded by a bullet and had to be stitched back together in seven places.

“It’s a lifelong complication for the patient, so he’s better to be very cautious in his diet,”said the surgeon.

Besides the potential for further medical complications, Lee says he is most worried about making sure Oh recovers psychologically. The soldier has already told him he had a nightmare about being returned to the North.

The surgeon said he has asked senior South Korean military officials who are eager to question the soldier to hold off while he recovers.

“This North Korean guy is not going anywhere,” Lee said. “He is staying in South Korea. So we don’t need to be hasty.”

TOKYO – A group of eight fishermen claiming to be from North Korea washed up in northern Japan after drifting there when their wooden vessel developed problems, authorities said on Friday.

Television footage from a pier in the city of Yurihonjo on Japan’s northwestern coast showed a wooden boat rigged with bare light bulbs, used to attract fish and squid.

“We understand that the eight individuals are reporting that they came from North Korea for fishing, but drifted there after their ship experienced (mechanical) troubles,” said Hachiro Okonogi, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission.

Local police told AFP they were alerted about the group early Friday and took them into custody.

The men were able to walk unaided, according to national broadcaster NHK.

Dozens of North Korean fishing vessels wash up on Japan’s Sea of Japan coast every year.

Sometimes their occupants have already died at sea, with their vessels delivering headless skeletons and rotten corpses to Japan’s fishing ports, with media occasionally calling them “ghost ships.” In late 2015, at least 14 weathered vessels – some badly damaged or capsized – with almost two dozen bodies reached Japanese shores or were found floating in regional waters.

Experts say some North Korean fishermen take risks to travel far out into the Sea of Japan, which is known on the Korean peninsula as the East Sea, in order to satisfy government mandates for bigger catches.

But their old and poorly equipped vessels are prone to mechanical and other problems, including running out of fuel, and there are few credible options to call for rescue.

Often surviving drifters are fishermen who request to be sent home, but some of them are defectors who are eventually sent to South Korea.

In September 2011, the Japanese coastguard rescued nine North Koreans on a small boat, included three children, who asked to be sent to South Korea.

Japan and North Korea have stormy relations, with Pyongyang routinely issuing verbal threats as well as firing missiles near or above Japan.

But the Japanese coastguard occasionally rescues North Korean fishermen in maritime accidents in regional waters.

The coastguard last week saved three out of 12 North Korean fishermen after their boat capsized in high seas. The survivors have been returned home as they wished.

The Japanese coastguard also found another capsized boat last week in the Sea of Japan with four bodies inside, with media reporting they were also North Korean fishermen.