Seoul: North Korea has yet to respond to South Korea's move to hand over the body of a North Korean national found here in June to the North via the truce village of Panmunjom, Seoul's unification ministry said Tuesday.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the ministry earlier called on North Korea to respond to Seoul's bid to transfer the body of a presumed North Korean man by 3 p.m. Tuesday. The body was found on the shore of Seongmodo, a South Korean island in the Yellow Sea in late June, with his belongings.
The ministry said it will wait for the North's response until the proposed deadline. "If there is no response by then, the body will be classified as unclaimed and a funeral will take place (after cremation) in cooperation with a related provincial government," a ministry official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
A total of 29 bodies of what are presumed to be North Korean nationals have been found in South Korean territory since 2010. Of them, North Korea has not taken six bodies, including two in 2023. North Korea last brought home the body of its national found in the South in 2019.
North Korea remains unresponsive to the Lee Jae Myung administration's overtures to resume dialogue and mend frayed inter-Korean ties.