US soldier detained by North Korea after crossing border during visit to DMZ
An American soldier being sent back to the US to face possible disciplinary action crossed in to North Korea during a tour of the demilitarised zone, US officials have said, becoming the first American detained in the North in nearly five years.
Private 2nd Class Travis King had served nearly two months in a South Korean prison for assault before being released to be sent home to Fort Bliss, Texas, on Monday, where he potentially faced additional military disciplinary actions and discharge from the service.
King was escorted to the airport in South Korea but then left the airport and later joined a tour of the Joint Security Area at the Korean border village of Panmunjom. South Korean reports said he bolted across the border while touring with a group of visitors, including civilians, on Tuesday afternoon. It remains unclear if King planned to defect.
Tuesday’s border crossing creates a fresh headache for the White House amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into its eastern sea early on Wednesday, shortly after the US deployed a nucleararmed submarine to South Korea for the first time in decades.
At a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday, defence secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that the US service member was likely now in North Korean custody.
“We’re closely monitoring and investigating the situation,” Austin said, noting he was foremost concerned about his wellbeing. “This will develop in the next several days and hours, and we’ll keep you posted.”
North Korea’s state media didn’t immediately report on the border crossing.
The army released his name and limited information after King’s family was notified of the incident. But a number of US officials provided additional details on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
United Nations Command, which oversees the demilitarised zone between South Korea and North Korea, confirmed a US national crossed the border “without authorisation” and was believed to be in custody and that it was working to “resolve this incident”.
A person who was part of the same tour group as King told CBS they had just visited a building then “this man gives out a loud, ‘Ha ha ha’, and just runs in between some buildings.” CBS cited the witness as saying military personnel reacted quickly but initially there was confusion.
“I thought it was a bad joke at first but when he didn’t come back I realised it wasn’t a joke and then everybody reacted and things got crazy,” the witness was quoted as saying.
According to CBS, the witness said there were no North Korean soldiers visible where the man ran, and that the group had been told there had not been since the coronavirus pandemic, when North Korea sought to seal its borders.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the US was working with North Korea to “resolve this incident”.
The state department tells US na
tionals not to enter North Korea “due to the continuing serious risk of arrest and long term detention”. Defections by Americans or South Koreans to North Korea are rare. Since the end of the Korean war, which was fought between 1950 and 1953, more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled south to avoid political oppression and economic hardship.
Numbers of defectors have fallen recently, in large part due to North Korean precautions over Covid-19. During the pandemic, foreign embassies in Pyongyang closed down.
During the cold war, a small number of US soldiers defected to North Korea. Among them was Charles Jenkins, who deserted his post in 1965. He appeared in North Korean propaganda films and married a Japanese nursing student who had been abducted by North Korean agents. He died in Japan in 2017.
Panmunjom was created inside the demilitarised zone (DMZ) at the close of the war. No civilians live in the area, which is jointly overseen by the UN Command and North Korea.
Bloodshed and gunfire have occurred in the past. In 1976, two US officers who tried to prune a tree were beaten to death, bringing Pyongyang and Washington to the brink of war. But the DMZ has also been a venue for talks and has become a popular tourist spot.
Some Americans arrested in North
Korea after allegedly entering from China have been convicted of espionage and other anti-state acts but released after high-profile US missions to secure their freedom.
The last three known American detainees were released in 2018, as the North Korean leader, Kim Jongun, engaged in nuclear diplomacy with Donald Trump, a process that led to the two leaders meeting at the DMZ and shaking hands.
Those releases made a striking contrast to the fate of Otto Warmbier, an American student who died in 2017, days after he was released in a coma after 17 months in captivity. Warmbier and other American detainees in North Korea were imprisoned over a variety of alleged crimes, including subversion, anti-state activities and spying.
Talks between Trump and Kim collapsed in 2019, amid disagreements over sanctions. In a book published in the US on Tuesday, a former Trump homeland security aide, Miles Taylor, describes how the administration worried “that the president would accidentally lead us into a nuclear war with North Korea”.