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Waves crash against a pier on the eastern coast of South Korea’s Gangwon Province. (Yonhap)

South Korea’s Navy said on Monday that it had recovered the body of a sailor who had gone missing in waters near the de facto maritime border with North Korea during a naval patrol mission the previous day. 

The Navy said that it had found the sailor’s remains in waters 52 kilometers east of Geojin, in Gangwon Province’s Goseong County, at 5:58 am on Monday before retrieving his body via a rigid inflatable boat at 6:43 am. The sailor was reportedly not wearing a life jacket. 

The sailor’s remains were transported to a naval base on the country’s eastern coast around 8 am on Monday. 

The Navy said that it would be working with civilian police and military investigators to determine the circumstances of the sailor’s disappearance and death.  

On Sunday, the Navy had announced that one of its uniformed sailors had disappeared in the East Sea some 50 kilometers off the coast of Geojin that morning. 

“The Navy is cooperating with the Coast Guard to find the missing person, deploying around 10 ships and aircraft. We are also alerting fishers and nearby merchant ships of the situation and asking for their cooperation in this search,” it said at the time. 
 
The missing sailor was identified as a private aboard a frigate. The Navy was alerted of the sailor’s disappearance when they failed to report for duty for their morning shift at 7:45 am.
 
The sailor on duty from 12 am to 2 am was the last to see the missing sailor and reported that they had gone about their duty as usual the previous day. 

Based on the fact that the sailor was believed to be in the waters near the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff notified North Korea of the search operation via the international merchant marine network.
 
The Unification Ministry also said that it had informed North Korea about a missing person possibly having drifted north of the border and asked for its cooperation in the search and their safe repatriation if found, with respect to humanitarian principles. 

By Jang Ye-ji, staff reporter; Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter

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