Seoul’s Unification Ministry asked North Korea to cooperate in the search for a missing South Korean sailor who may have drifted north of the inter-Korean maritime border in the East Sea.

One sailor aboard a ROK naval vessel conducting a patrol mission in the East Sea went missing earlier on Sunday and may have drifted north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a Unification Ministry spokesperson said in a press statement. 

“As the South Korean navy is currently conducting search operations for the missing individual, we request cooperation in the search and repatriation efforts from a humanitarian perspective,” the spokesperson