The country’s coast guard said the man had traveled about three hundred kilometers across the Yellow Sea using binoculars and a compass, but then got stuck.
Local reports named him as Pyong Kwon, a critic of President Xi Jinping, but his identity has not been verified.
The Chinese embassy in Seoul declined to comment.
In recent years, Beijing has increased its use of exit bans at airports and other legal border crossings in order to block activists from leaving Chinese territory.
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