State media reported that the 39-year-old man, identified by Chinese authorities as Zhu Xianjian, was just two years away from serving his prison term when he staged a prison break that went viral. strong.
Court documents recount that Zhu was a North Korean coal miner who swam across the river to a Chinese village in Tumen city, Jilin province in 2013. He was arrested later that same year. 2014 was sentenced to 11 years in prison for illegal border crossing. , petty theft and robbery, then deported, according to a court ruling.
Zhu, whose sentence was reduced twice for good behavior, escaped from Jilin City on October 18. His dramatic escape, which was captured on video and included the use of a rope to do so Break the electric fence and jump from the high prison. wall, has led to online speculation that Zhu was a member of the North Korean military.
A related hashtag on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, has since garnered more than 800 million views.
Authorities offered a reward of more than $23,000 for his capture, which has since increased to more than $100,000 – more than 350 times the average monthly income of local residents.
On Sunday, Jilin police said in a statement that Zhu was arrested around 10 a.m. local time, but did not provide further details.
In a video of his arrest posted by the state-run Global Times, a emaciated Zhu man is carried by police officers by his arms and legs on a pier. In related footage, he can be heard crying as he is driven into a car. Zhu is said to have been shot in the leg and taken to hospital for treatment.
On Weibo, some users expressed surprise that Zhu was able to survive so long in the cold, with temperatures dropping below freezing in the past 10 days.
According to Human Rights Watch, North Korean defectors sent home can face serious consequences including torture and sexual abuse.
In the hunt for Zhu, police mistakenly arrested another man, who had an unfortunate resemblance to Zhu, five times in three days, according to state media, according to state media.
“My first reaction was that the man who looks like him can finally be free,” commented one user under the Global Times post about Zhu’s arrest.
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