A North Korean soldier who made a dramatic escape to the South via the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) last year said Wednesday he received a message of apology from a Japanese newspaper for running an interview with him with distorted facts.

Oh Chong-song told Yonhap News Agency that he made a complaint to the Sankei Shimbun about the content of the interview and got a text message apologizing to him through an interpreter.

The far-right Japanese news outlet published an exclusive video interview with Oh early this month, the first interview since his defection that made international headlines as the recorded footage of his escape was released.

In the interview, Oh made disparaging remarks about the South Korean Army, calling it "an army that isn't so much like one."

"All I said was how different (the South Korean) Army is compared with the North's, in terms of training and such, because we need to serve a lot longer term than South Korean men," he said.

"And the media twisted my story in a weird way."

He insisted he did not know Sankei's political orientation and just accepted the interview without taking it seriously, as friends of his living in Japan introduced the reporter to him when he visited the country to meet them.

But Oh stopped short of saying more when asked whether he plans to request a formal correction for the interview.

"I think I'll have to see ... before making a decision."

In November last year, the 25-year-old drove a jeep-like vehicle across a bridge toward the South's side of the truce village of Panmunjom in the heavily fortified border that divides the two Koreas. As he was being chased by his peers, he was seen in the footage jumping out of the car and running toward the South's side, amid a hail of bullets being fired at him.

He suffered multiple gunshot wounds and underwent surgery at a local hospital near Seoul. The doctor in charge of the surgery disclosed Oh's health problems, including an infection of parasitic worms.

In the interview with Sankei, Oh introduced himself as a son of a major general and said the younger generation in his homeland had no loyalty to the North Korean regime and that many of them are indifferent to the rule of its leader Kim Jong-un. (Yonhap)