hankyoreh

Thirty-one North Korean people crossed the tense Yellow Sea border by boat and arrived on the frontline South Korean island of Yeonpyeong on Saturday in an apparent defection, a government source said Monday.
The North Koreans, consisting of 11 men and 20 women, arrived on Yeonpyeong Island by a fishing boat and were towed away to the western port city of Incheon, the source said on the condition of anonymity.
“Currently, a team of military and intelligence officials is interrogating the North Koreans on how they crossed the Yellow Sea border,” the source said. The source said the North Koreans are a “work group,” not family members.
A military official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said investigators are looking into the possibility that the North Koreans arrived on Yeonpyeong Island after drifting at sea.
There are no children among the North Koreans and they were believed to have left North Korea’s western port city of Nampo, about 60 kilometers southwest of Pyongyang, according to the military official.
They were spotted in thick fog as of 11:00 a.m. on Saturday by the South’s military stationed on Yeonpyeong, the official said.
“Given the circumstances so far, they might have been drifting after setting the wrong coordinates or losing power on their boat,” the military official said.
The arrival of North Koreans also comes at a sensitive time as military officials from Seoul and Pyongyang were set to hold their first dialogue on Tuesday since the North’s deadly attack of Yeonpyeong last November.
(Yonhap News Agency)
　
International marriage rate passes 10 pct. 　
One out of every 10 South Koreans married a non-Korean, according to data released by Statistics Korea on Sunday.
According to the data, 33,300 South Koreans entered international marriages in 2009, accounting for 10.8 percent of all marriages. Chinese and Vietnamese brides were most common among the international marriages.
　
Wedding gifts to be returned after short marriage period
The Seoul Family Court ordered Sunday in a divorce suit a newly-wed man to pay back 870 million Won ($778,000) to his wife that her family had given his family as wedding gifts.
The court said wedding gifts should be given back if a marriage ends in such a short period of five months.
“Wedding gifts, exchanged before marriage, are returned if the marriage is annulled. If a marriage falls apart in a short period, we consider it to be the same as an annulled marriage, so the gifts should be returned,” the court said in the ruling.
　
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