South Korea's Unification Ministry on Thursday rejected a report by a local television station that a high-level North Korean general had defected to the South, with a ministry spokesman calling it "groundless."
Channel A, a television network affiliated with the conservative Dong-a Ilbo newspaper, said that Lt. Gen. Pak Sung Won, a deputy chief of the General Staff of the North Korean Army, had escaped to Seoul via Moscow.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday dismissed the report as "sheer lies" and accused the South's intelligence agency of being behind the "false propaganda."