A North Korean soldier was taken into custody by the South after he voluntarily crossed the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas on Sunday, Seoul’s military said.

The soldier was seeking “to defect to the South,” a defence ministry official said.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the peninsula was divided by war in the 1950s, with most going overland to neighbouring China first, then entering a third country such as Thailand before finally making it to the South.

Defections across the land border that divides the peninsula are relatively rare, as the area is densely forested, ridden with landmines and monitored by soldiers on both sides.

“Our military secured the custody of one North Korean soldier who crossed the military demarcation line (MDL) in the central front on Sunday,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

“The military identified the individual near the MDL, tracked and monitored him, and conducted a standard guidance operation to take him into custody,” it said.