South Korea's presidential Blue House on Sunday called on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to conduct a joint probe into the killing of a South Korean civilian near the inter-Korean sea boundary.
Suh Choo-suk, deputy director of the National Security Office of the Blue House, told a press briefing that South Korea called on the DPRK to jointly investigate and rapidly reveal the truth of the incident.
Suh urged the DPRK to restore and reopen the inter-Korean military hotlines for communication, discussion and the exchange of information relevant to the investigation, saying that the two countries should make efforts to search for the missing body of the dead in their respective territorial waters.
The South Korean military said on Thursday that a fisheries official was shot dead by DPRK soldiers near the inter-Korean maritime border. The DPRK sent a notice to the Blue House Friday to explain the deadly shooting, according to the presidential office.
The DPRK's official Korean Central News Agency reported that Pyongyang was about to organize a search operation and considered the procedures of "handing over any tide-brought corpse to the south side conventionally" in case they found it during the operation.
