North Korean troops yesterday abducted two South Korean farmers in the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas, the United Nations Command said in a statement.
By yesterday evening, the two had still not been released, the UN Command spokesman, Mr Jim Coles, said. Mr Coles earlier said that North Korea had indicated it would return the two farmers, but said later he "misspoke and went beyond what is known of the situation" due to an administrative error in his office.
"The incident remains under investigation. We are continuing contact with the Korea People's Army (KPA) and we are monitoring the situation," he said. A statement from the UN Command said 12 armed North Korean soldiers "crossed the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and abducted the two South Korean farmers in a rice field north-east of the village of Taesong-dong, south of the MDL".
It said the soldiers took the two - a man and a woman - to their side of the demarcation line, which bisects the DMZ. The statement said there were no reports of gunfire by either side.
A spokesman for South Korea's Ministry of National Defence said Seoul had demanded a "safe and speedy return of the abducted residents".
Yonhap Television News reported the two abductees were Ms Hong Sung-soon (66) and her son, Mr Kim Young-bok (41). Both were residents of Taesongdong, also known as "Freedom Village", which has roughly 240 residents.
The President, Mr Kim Youngsam, was briefed on the incident but has made no official comment, a presidential spokesman said.
"If the two residents are returned immediately there will be no problem. But if they are taken North, the situation could last quite a while," the presidential spokesman said.
Television news reports said five South Koreans were working in a rice field inside the DMZ. Two of them went into the hills to pick acorns when they were abducted by North Korean guards close to the demarcation line.
The line, which can be blurred by bushes, divides the 4km-wide DMZ between North and South Korea.
Yonhap Television News said the South Korean authorities disbanded a military reaction team which had been dispatched in the DMZ following the abduction as there were no further acts of provocation.
Incidents on the border are not uncommon.
Most of North Korea's 1.14 million member army is deployed along the tense border dividing the two Koreas, which are technically still at war.
Meanwhile in Tokyo, a US Congressman who just returned from one of the most extensive US surveys of North Korea's famine said yesterday the communist nation was close to a massive disaster.
Although the visit, by Mr Tony Hall, did not back up some reports of mass deaths from the famine, he portrayed a nation descending ever faster into a twilight world of little hope.
He also told of an alarming shortage of medicines, including one hospital where the only supplies were traditional roots and cow horns which are ground to make age-old medicines.
"International food aid is getting through and the [current] harvest will buy a little more time, but people in the countryside continue to teeter on the brink of a massive disaster," Mr Hall said in Tokyo on his return from the three-day tour of North Korea.
He met North Korean officials in the capital, Pyongyang, including the Foreign Minister, Mr Kim Yong Nam, and the Vice-Foreign Minister, Mr Kim Gye Gwan.
Mr Hall, who has now made three tours of North Korea, the last one in April, said each time the situation was more grim.
"Every time I go to North Korea, people seem to have gone down another level," he said. "The whole country is moving down the scale and it seems like they are hanging on a precipice."