About-turn as South Korean defects to communist North

A North Korean flag is seen on top of a tower in Gijungdong village near the Kaesong inter-Korean industrial park in this picture taken from an observation post at the truce village of Panmunjom, in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas in Paju, about 55 km (34 miles) north of Seoul, December 3, 2008.

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean man who worked at Samsung Electronics' semiconductor unit and more recently at a pig farm has defected to the North by walking across the heavily mined border, the communist state's media said on Tuesday.

Crossings are rare through the razor-wire and land-mined Demilitarized Zone buffer that divides the peninsula. But defections to the impoverished North from the affluent South are even rarer, with the last one likely taking place about four years ago.

"He is beside himself with joy for having accomplished this heroic deed," the North's KCNA news agency said. It identified the defector as Kang Dong-rim, 30.

"He is now under the warm care of a relevant organ," KCNA said.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said a part of the barbed wire fence on the South side of the DMZ had been cut and that could be where Kang crossed, the South's Yonhap news agency said.

The rival Koreas remain technically at war because they never replaced the armistice ending their 1950-53 conflict with a peace treaty.

Since 2006, more than 2,000 North Koreans a year have defected to the South after crossing the longer and less perilous border with China. More than 16,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since 1953.

In 2005, KCNA said a man sailed through a volley of bullets to defect to the North. The South's military said at the time his family suspected he was drunk.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Nick Macfie)