Renegade South Korean soldier captured

A South Korean conscript soldier who shot and killed five of his comrades in an attack near the armed border with North Korea has suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound and is being transferred to a hospital, an official said on Monday.

South Korean troops had cornered the soldier to a densely wooded area on Monday, and were trying to negotiate a peaceful end to a manhunt that started two days earlier with attack at an outpost near the border with North Korea.

The soldier's parents had been brought in to plead with him to surrender after an exchange of gunfire on Monday saw the military surround him.

Speaking from Seoul, Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett said the standoff had continued "after the soldier engaged a checkpoint on Sunday afternoon."

Troops fired back. Villagers in the area were warned not to leave their houses. The head of a nearby village, Jang Seok-kwon, said that he heard gunshots ring out about 10 times Sunday.

A platoon leader was wounded in the gunfight. On Monday, officials said a South Korean soldier was wounded by suspected friendly fire.

Military officials ordered a lockdown in effect around the search zone, including guard posts along the Demilitarized Zone border, a 2.5 miles wide band of land serving as a buffer between the two Koreas since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Troops surrounded Yim so closely Monday in the forest about four miles from the border outpost that they could toss him a mobile phone to talk to his father as well as bread and bottled water. Yim, who at that point still refused to surrender, had ammunition and officials feared he might "commit an extreme act" —  an apparent reference to suicide, Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said at a briefing before Yim apparantly shot himself.

Besides the mobile phone, Yim's parents also used a loudspeaker to try to persuade him to surrender, according to the Defense Ministry.

The soldier had thrown a grenade and opened fire late on Saturday night, killing five members of his unit and wounding seven at an outpost in the base at Goseong county, a mountainous region that borders North Korea on the eastern coast of the peninsula.

The soldier was described by an official 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.

The soldier, identified only by his surname of Yim, was scheduled to be discharged from the military in September. He had fled with his weapon, but during the hunt for him it was never clear how much ammunition he had.

A Defense Ministry official confirmed Yim was considered a "protected and watched soldier," which meant he needed special attention among servicemen. According to the official, the South Korean military assigns such status based on servicemen's periodical personality tests.

Yim was designated a grade A protected soldier in April last year — one with a high risk of suicide attempt or inducing other accidents who could not serve at heavily guarded outposts. He then improved to grade B status last November, which means he was being watched closely but could serve at outposts at a commander's discretion.

The Korea Times, in an editorial Monday, said an initial probe into Yim's attack by a 48-member army investigation team exposed problems on the front line.

The two Koreas remain technically at war and the border is regarded as potentially one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints. Tensions between the rivals have been high recently, with North Korea staging a series of missile and artillery drills and threatening South Korea's leader. There was no indication that North Korea was involved Yim’s attack.

Al Jazeera and wire services