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South Korean soldier who shot dead five colleagues surrounded by authorities South Korean soldier who killed five colleagues involved in shootout with troops at school on North Korea border
(about 7 hours later)
South Korean media are reporting that military authorities have surrounded a soldier who killed five comrades at a border outpost the day before and were engaged in a gunfight with him.   The parents of a South Korean conscript soldier who killed five comrades in a grenade and gun attack pleaded with him to surrender on Sunday, after he exchanged fire with troops who had tracked him down near a school close to the North Korean border.
Yonhap News agency and the YTN news channel said Sunday that authorities were trying to persuade the soldier, identified only by his family name Yim, to surrender. Yim opened fire Saturday night with his standard issue K2 assault rifle at an outpost in Gangwon province, east of Seoul, killing five fellow soldiers and wounding seven others, according to a Defense Ministry spokesman who insisted on anonymity. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. The military searched Sunday for an armed South Korean soldier who fled after killing five of his comrades and wounding seven at an outpost near the North Korean border.The sergeant, identified only by his surname, Yim, opened fire Saturday night with his standard issue K2 assault rifle at an outpost in Gangwon province, east of Seoul, according to a Defense Ministry spokesman. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of department rules. Yim, who was scheduled to be discharged from the military in September, fled with his weapon, but it wasn't clear how much live ammunition he had, the official said. Defense official Kim Min-seok said Sunday at a televised briefing that all the wounded were expected to survive, although two were injured seriously. He said search operations were underway to quickly find Yim, without elaborating. Park Cheol-yong, the head of Madal village, near the army division where the gunfire took place, said he warned villagers to stay in their houses. Park Jin-soo, a pastor at a church in the village, said that Sunday services would take place as usual despite the tension over the missing soldier and the shooting. Thousands of troops from the rival Koreas are squared off along the world's most heavily armed border. There was no indication that North Korea was involved. But tensions between the two countries have been high recently, with North Korea staging a series of missile and artillery drills and threatening South Korea's leader. The Koreas have also traded fire along their disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea. South Korea has repeatedly vowed to respond with strength if provoked by the North. Shootings happen occasionally at the border. In 2011, a 19-year-old marine corporal went on a shooting rampage at a Gwanghwa Island base, just south of the maritime border with North Korea. Military investigators later said that corporal was angry about being shunned and slighted and showed signs of mental illness before the shooting. In 2005, a soldier tossed a hand grenade and opened fire at a front-line army unit in a rampage that killed eight colleagues and injured several others. Pfc. Kim Dong-min told investigators he was enraged at superiors who verbally abused him. All able-bodied South Korean men must serve about two years in the military under a conscription system aimed at countering aggression from North Korea. The Korean Peninsula is still technically in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 28,500 U.S. soldiers are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against North Korean aggression. Late on Saturday night, the soldier threw a grenade and opened fire, killing five members of his unit and wounding seven others, at an outpost in the base at Goseong county, a mountainous region that borders the North on the eastern coast of the peninsula.
A manhunt went in to full swing at daybreak, with helicopters sweeping the heavily forested hillsides and special forces took part in a search that, according to a colonel briefing media, involved the equivalent of nine battalions.
Discovered hiding near a school some 10 kilometres (6 miles) from the base, the soldier opened fire on troops, wounding a platoon leader in the arm, YTN television news channel reported.
Troops had orders to 'shoot to kill' unless the fugitive soldier surrendered, YTN reported, citing military officials.
The parents of the soldier, according to Yonhap news agency, were taken to the site, where his mother pleaded with him to surrender as a stand-off developed after the initial burst of gunfire.
“I heard several gun shots for 10 minutes,” Byun Sang-man, a 80 year old farmer, told Reuters from the village.
“We can't go outside... Soldiers have spread out all around our town. The headman told people this morning to stay inside through loudspeakers.”
A military official identified the soldier as Sergeant Lim, and said he was due to be discharged on 16 September.
The official, who requested anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, described Lim as an “introvert” and said there had been earlier concerns over his psychological health, but he was deemed fit to be deployed to the outpost after passing a test in November.
Yonhap news agency reported some details of the events at the base on Saturday night.
“He first threw a grenade and then opened fire. He was returning after completing his day shift duty,” Yonhap reported.
Following the shooting the military threw a cordon around the search zone, including guard posts along the Demilitarized Zone, a 4-kilometre (2.5-mile) wide swathe of land serving as a buffer between the two Koreas since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
North and South Korea are technically still at war as their conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty and the border is regarded as potentially one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints.
The shooting comes at a sensitive period for South Korea, with the nation still in shock after the death of more than 300 people, mostly school children, in a ferry disaster in April.
The defense ministry issued an apology to the nation over the shooting. The military has been criticised over similar incidents in the past.
“I offer my sincere apology to Koreans for causing worry,” Kim Min-seok, the ministry spokesman, said on Sunday.
The military has been criticized before for lax discipline in some units and failure to prevent previous cases where soldiers, suffering personal problems, have shot fellow soldiers.
In a similar incident in 2011, a South Korean marine went on a shooting spree at a base near the tense maritime border with North Korea, killing four fellow soldiers before trying to blow himself up with a hand grenade.
All able-bodied South Korean men must serve about two years under a conscription system, and there are concerns that the new recruits are softer and find it harder than past generations to adapt to military life.
AP