A North Korean defector who escaped to the South more than a decade ago was detained after attempting to cross back into North Korea on a stolen bus, police said.

The area is heavily guarded by military forces due to its proximity to the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world.

Since moving to South Korea in 2011, the 35-year-old man had been working day-to-day jobs without a stable home.

He told police he missed his family back in North Korea.

“However, he has failed to settle down in the South and has been missing his family in North Korea,” they said.

The man’s case is rare. More than 34,000 North Korean defectors have arrived in South Korea since fighting ended in the Korean War in 1953, according to official data.

In the past decade, roughly 30 have returned home.

Defectors and advocates say the fact that some North Korean defectors try to return home points to how difficult it can be for them to assimilate into South Korean society.

The defector, who has not been named by authorities, is being investigated for possible charges including vehicle theft, driving without a proper license, violation of military base protection, and National Security Law violation, police said.

CCTV footage released by local police showed a man wearing shorts and a hoodie wandering around parked buses. He is seen checking a couple of buses before the lights of one turn on. Shortly after, he drives the bus away.

This is not the first time a North Korean defector has attempted to cross the bridge to return to their home country, according to police.

In recent years, there have been at least three other similar failed attempts, though this is the first one involving a stolen bus.

In September 2021, a woman in her 60s tried to cross the same bridge on foot but was apprehended.

In August 2018, a man in his 30s drove a car across the bridge, passing checkpoints, but was apprehended by forces in the Joint Security Area – the section of the DMZ where North and South Korean forces stand face to face.

The man had previously crossed the border into North Korea via China but was returned by North Korean authorities.

Two people have died after a typhoon slammed into southwestern Taiwan, deluging the major port city of Kaohsiung with heavy rain and forcing the island to shut down for a second day.

With winds of up to 135 kilometers per hour (85 miles per hour), Typhoon Krathon made landfall along southern Taiwan shortly after noon on Thursday, the equivalent of a Category 1 Atlantic hurricane.

Two people died and 219 injuries have been reported, according to Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operations Center, adding that one person is also missing.

One was a 66-year-old driver hit by falling rocks. The other was a 70-year-old man who fell while trimming a tree during the typhoon, according to the center.

For several hours before making landfall, Krathon moved slowly along the southern coast. In previous days it had hovered between Taiwan and the Philippines as a Category 4 equivalent, with Taiwan President Lai Ching-te warning of “catastrophic damage.”

While the storm has since weakened, it has battered Taiwan with a deluge, forcing the closure of schools and the stock market earlier this week. Hundreds of flights have been suspended, and as of 3 p.m. close to 100,000 households faced power outages, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

A wide swath of 250-500 mm (10-20 inches) with isolated totals over a meter (40 inches) have occurred from Krathon. Additional rainfall of 250 – 500 mm (10-20 inches) are possible from Krathon as it meanders over and near Taiwan.

Schools and offices were once again closed across Taiwan on Thursday. More than 38,000 Taiwanese soldiers are on standby to help in case of emergencies.

Kaohsiung officials warned of the impact of Krathon’s slow pace. “If it passes very slowly, and even stops at Kaohsiung and the Tainan areas, it could lengthen its damage on Kaohsiung,” mayor Chen Chi-mai told reporters on Thursday.

“Please avoid going out,” he added.

University student Liao Shian-rong, 24, told Reuters that he traveled from Taipei to Kaohsiung to chase the storm, calling it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“We are being hit by the eyewall now and will enter the eye soon,” he said, filming the storm from a hotel lobby.

Footage posted by users on social media platform Threads showed fierce winds had toppled motorcycles and scaffolding structures, ripping off roofs.

The storm, known in the Philippines as Julien, has already lashed that country’s northernmost islands, prompting evacuations and severe flooding in coastal communities.

Nearly 23,000 families in three regions have been affected by the storm, the Philippines’ national disaster agency said Tuesday, according to the Philippine News Agency.

International concern is growing over the arrest of a prominent Cambodian journalist who helped expose human trafficking fueling online scam centers, with several governments and rights groups calling for his immediate release.

Mech Dara was arrested Monday by Cambodian police and charged with incitement “to provoke serious social chaos” over social media posts he made last month about operations at a rock quarry, according to a statement from the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in the country’s capital. He could face two years in prison for each count.

The award-winning reporter is renowned for his investigations exposing corruption, environmental destruction and human trafficking in a country that heavily restricts press freedom. Cambodian NGO LICADHO said he has consistently pushed for accountability and justice.

In 2023, Mech Dara won the US State Department’s TIP Hero Award for his work uncovering the multi-billion-dollar illegal scam center industry in Cambodia. Images show him standing alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who presented the award.

In a statement on X, the US Embassy in Cambodia said “we are deeply troubled by the arrest of Mech Dara and call for his release.” The embassy called the reporter a “leading voice against human trafficking and online scams” and an “advocate for freedom of expression-guaranteed in the constitution.”

The USAID Cambodia Counter Trafficking in Persons project said Mech Dara “is the embodiment of the ideals of a free society in Cambodia” and that it “stands publicly in its support for this great person and anti-trafficking hero.”

The European Union and Australia also shared concerns over his arrest. “All Cambodians should be able to exercise their right to freedom of expression without the fear of arrest and prosecution,” the Australian embassy in Cambodia said.

A group of 46 Cambodian media and civil society organizations called for Mech Dara’s immediate release, saying his arrest “is a clear attempt to intimidate and silence him and other journalists.”

Human rights groups have said charges of incitement are commonly used by Cambodian authorities against human rights defenders, activists, journalists and government critics.

Southeast Asia’s scam operations

A major focus of Mech Dara’s work is Cambodia’s role at the center of a scamming epidemic in Southeast Asia that has ensnared hundreds of thousands of victims and raised global security concerns from bodies like the US State Department and the United Nations.

Many people across Asia are duped into seemingly legitimate jobs around the region and are then trafficked into scam compounds where they face serious abuse, including forced labor, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment or torture – often with minimal or no help from local authorities.

Forming the epicenter of this network is Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, according to the US Institute of Peace and law enforcement bodies. The UN says 100,000 people could be held in compounds across Cambodia with another 120,000 people held in Myanmar in conditions that amount to modern slavery.

From these compounds, the mainly Chinese-run transnational criminal gangs run lucrative online operations ranging from illegal gambling to love scams and crypto fraud. Victims are from around the world, including the US.

In Cambodia, the industry is worth $12.8 billion annually – equivalent to half of the country’s GDP, according to the USIP.

Clampdown on press freedom in Cambodia

Rights groups say Cambodia’s once thriving media sector has been decimated in recent years by former strongman Hun Sen, who ruled the country for more than three decades before handing power to his eldest son Hun Manet in 2022.

Cambodia is ranked 151 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ 2024 World Press Freedom Index. Since 2018, independent media outlets have been gutted or forced to close, and censorship, state surveillance, media blackouts and online harassment are rampant.

As a freelancer, Mech Dara worked for several local and international media outlets including Voice of Democracy, which was forced to close last year.

The closure of Cambodia’s last remaining independent media organization was widely condemned as the final blow to press freedom in the country.

“There are so many stories to be told about Cambodia from Cambodia and this extends to the wider region – countries like Myanmar and Vietnam,” he added. “It’s a space that’s getting narrower and narrower and voices are stifled so that the outside world can’t see in.”

In a statement on his arrest, a research director for Amnesty International, Kate Schuetze, said the charges against Mech Dara show “yet again that the Cambodian government will not hesitate to repress journalists.”

“This is the latest step in the new government’s campaign to erase press freedom,” she said.

China’s Coast Guard claimed it entered waters of the Arctic Ocean for the first time as part of a joint patrol with Russia – in the latest sign of enhanced coordination between the two in a region where Beijing has long wished to expand its footprint.

The statement came a day after the US Coast Guard said it spotted four vessels from the Russian Border Guard and Chinese Coast Guard in the Bering Sea – the “northernmost” location it said it had ever observed the Chinese ships.

The joint patrol “effectively expanded the scope of the coast guard’s ocean-going navigation” and tested their ability “to carry out missions in unfamiliar waters,” the China Coast Guard (CCG) said in a post on its official social media account Wednesday.

The CCG did not release the exact location of the patrol. A banner visible on one of the vessels in accompanying photos read “China Coast Guard devoting its heart to the Party; demonstrating loyalty in the Arctic Ocean,” referring to China’s ruling Communist Party.

The Russian government has not officially acknowledged the patrol, which Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said took place “a few days ago.” Russian state media TASS published a report on the patrol, citing the CCG statement.

The US Coast Guard (USCG) on Monday said it spotted the four vessels from the Russian Border Guard and Chinese Coast Guard “transiting in formation in a northeast direction” in the Bering Sea, some five miles inside Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone on Saturday.

The Bering Sea stretches between Russia and Alaska and is part of the North Pacific Ocean. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait, a narrow passage separating Asia and North America.

“This recent activity demonstrates the increased interest in the Arctic by our strategic competitors,” Rear Adm. Megan Dean, commander of the 17th Coast Guard District, said in the USCG statement.

The US has raised concerns about China’s growing role and coordination with Russia in the strategically and environmentally sensitive Arctic region, as the two countries tighten their security and economic ties more broadly.

US and Canadian forces in July intercepted Russian and Chinese bombers flying together near Alaska for the first time, while their two navies operated together in international waters off the Alaskan coast in 2022 and 2023, according to the US military.

Last year, CCG and Russia’s Federal Security Service, which operates its coast guard, agreed to strengthen their “maritime law enforcement cooperation” and China was invited to observe Russia’s “Arctic Patrol-2023” security drills.

Analysts say the new patrol is part of a broader pattern of collaboration – and designed to send a message to Washington, whose maritime activities in the South and East China Seas have longed irked Beijing.

“The significance of the (China) Coast Guard operating farther north than it has ever done implies (China) is extending its Coast Guard into areas the US has traditionally considered its own domain,” said Carl Schuster, a retired US Navy captain and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

“China in particular is signaling that the US Coast Guard is not the only one that (can) operate within and near other countries’ Economic Exclusion Zones from their own home waters,” he said.

Arctic ambitions

Beijing has for years sought to increase its footprint in the Arctic, declaring itself a “near Arctic state” and beefing up its icebreaker and research capabilities in the region, where it’s also heavily invested in Russian energy projects.

Russia, as one of eight Arctic states, has historically been wary of being too welcoming to China in a region key to its own security and military power.

But observers say Moscow’s increasing reliance on China – its most important diplomatic and economic partner – in the wake of its war on Ukraine may be changing that calculus.

In its first update to its Arctic strategy in five years, the US Department of Defense in July warned that “growing cooperation” between Russia and China in the region has the “potential to alter the Arctic’s stability and threat picture.”

The recent joint activities, including the July patrol near Alaska, raise questions of whether Russia’s focus on controlling access to the Russian Arctic is “increasingly overshadowed by economic and political considerations,” said Sophie Arts, a fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the US’s Geostrategy North team.

“However, when it comes to growing Russian willingness to cater to Chinese interests, we have to take into account the location in which these activities are taking place,” she added, pointing to how the strategically peripheral patrol location suggests “Russian concerns about controlling access and maintaining its bastion (of) defense remain a priority.”

Andreas Østhagen, a senior researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway, expressed skepticism that Chinese vessels had operated in the Arctic Ocean proper.

“It still links to the wider Arctic region, even if this is not the Arctic Ocean. Operating off the coast of Alaska or in the Bering Sea at large is part of an ongoing trend where China is asserting its ability to be present in the Arctic, or near the Arctic,” he said.

Economic interests

The China Coast Guard is part of the country’s People’s Armed Police, which is under the command of the Central Military Commission – and it has frequently been at the frontline of China’s efforts to assert its territorial claims in disputed waters in the South China Sea.

The Philippines, for example, has repeatedly accused the CCG of targeting its fishing and other ships with water canons and other tactics, including in what it described as a “brutal assault” with bladed weapons on Filipino forces in June.

In addition to projecting strength, Beijing has a practical interest in expanding its cooperation with Russia and presence in far north waters, where its coast guard could in the future protect its economic interests, experts say.

In its 2018 Arctic policy, Beijing described its vision for a “Polar Silk Road,” linking Asia to Europe by developing shipping routes like the Northern Sea Route across the Arctic and down to China. That route, now largely navigable only in summer and autumn, is expected to become more commercially viable for global shipping as climate change melts sea ice.

Transit along the Northern Sea Route during the summer-autumn navigation season is poised to hit record levels of transit cargo by the season’s end, according to data from the Centre for High North Logistics affiliated with Norway’s Nord University. As of September 30, about 95% of the cargo volume along the route went from Russia to China, it said in a recent report.

The coast guard collaboration “relates to Chinese interests in maritime transportation along at least parts of the Northern Sea Route,” according to Østhagen. “The fact that they have initiated these types of operations is yet another step in the ongoing practical cooperation between the two states in an Arctic or near-Arctic context.”

And when taken alongside other recent joint operations, “this is all about expanding both the Chinese footprint in this part of the Arctic and China’s abilities to operate this far north,” he said.

Georgian parliamentary speaker Shalva Papuashvili said in a Facebook post on Thursday that he had signed into law a “family values” bill curbing LGBT rights, just weeks before a high-stakes parliamentary election.

Lawmakers from the ruling Georgian Dream party last month approved the bill, which bans gender transitions and could outlaw pride marches and displays of the LGBT rainbow flag. The party says the law is necessary to protect Georgia’s Orthodox Christian church from outsiders.

President Salome Zourabichvili, a critic of the ruling party, had refused to sign the bill into law. Georgian Dream and its allies in parliament had enough seats to overcome her opposition.

Georgian LGBT activists say that the law is an attempt by Georgian Dream to boost support among conservative voters ahead of the Oct. 26 election, in which the party is seeking an unprecedented fourth term in power.

Some Western countries have criticized the bill, casting it as part of what they say is a turn towards authoritarianism and alignment with Russia in country that had mainly leaned towards the West since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Opinion polls show that Georgian Dream remains the country’s most popular single party against a divided opposition, though it has lost ground since 2020, when it won almost 50% of the vote and a narrow majority in parliament.

Georgian Dream, founded by the country’s richest man, has also enacted a law requiring groups that receive funding from abroad to register as foreign agents, which its opponents say is modelled on legislation used to criminalize dissent in Russia.

Relations with Moscow have overshadowed politics for decades in Georgia, which has been a candidate to join NATO and the EU.

Moscow supports separatists in two ethnic regions who broke away from Tbilisi’s rule in wars in the 1990s, and Russian forces defeated Georgia in a brief war in 2008. Georgian Dream argues that its opponents would bring a return to war, and says it would pursue more stable relations with Russia.