North Korea was silent about its detention of a 23-year-old U.S. soldier who dashed across the heavily militarized border after he had been ordered to return to the United States to face possible discipline and discharge from the military.
U.S. Army Private 2nd Class Travis King ran into North Korea while on a civilian tour of the Demilitarized Zone on Tuesday, a day after he was supposed to leave for a military base in the U.S.
King had been released from a South Korean prison last week after serving nearly two months for assault.
King was sentended to 47 days in a South Korean detention facility following an altercation with locals.
South Korean media reported that King repeatedly punched someone in the face while drinking at a club in Seoul last September. He also allegedly kicked and broke the door of a police patrol car that was sent to the scene of another reported assault in Seoul last October.
King completed his sentence and was released from the detention facility on July 10.
King was supposed to board a flight and report to Fort Bliss, Texas, pending administrative separation actions for foreign conviction. Instead, he left the airport terminal, signed up for a tour of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, where he crossed the border that separates North and South Korea.
“I’m absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troop. We will remain focused on this, and this will develop in the next several days,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
King earned three U.S. military decorations, including the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Defense Service Medal and the Overseas Service Ribbon. These medals are commonly awarded to American service members in Korea.
King, was originally assigned to 6th Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, according Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee, who said King “is currently administratively attached to 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.
His immediate fate in North Korea was unknown, but the Pyongyang government has held Americans in the past and not quickly released them. The two countries have no diplomatic relations and tensions between them remain high.
King’s mother, Claudine Gates, who lives in Racine, Wisconsin, said she was shocked when she heard her son had crossed into North Korea.
“I can’t see Travis doing anything like that,” Gates told ABC News during an interview on Tuesday. Gates said the U.S. Army told her on Tuesday morning that King had crossed into North Korea. She said she last heard from her son “a few days ago,” when he told her would return soon to his base in Fort Bliss.
The last detention of a U.S. national by the North Korean regime was Bruce Byron Lowrance in 2018.
The North Koreans said Lowrance was the victim of a CIA mind-manipulation plot and released him back to the United States after about a month in custody.
“Since the mid-1990s, there [have] been about 20 Americans detained for various reasons, including alleged espionage, dissemination of religious information, and ‘disrespectful’ tourist behavior,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) observed in a note Tuesday.
U.S. nationals captured by North Korean forces don’t always fare as well as Lowrance.
In January 2016, North Korean authorities detained an Ohio college student named Otto Warmbier—who was part of a tour group—for stealing a propaganda poster from a North Korean hotel, and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor.
He was returned to the United States in 2017 in a coma and died shortly after due to extensive medical issues he developed in North Korean custody.
On Wednesday, North Korea test-fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in an apparent protest of the deployment of a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time in decades.
The arrival of the USS Kentucky, capable of launching Trident II ballistic missiles with a range of 12,000 kilometers, is a highly symbolic move signaling that Washington will stand with South Korea in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.
Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in South Korea, told The Associated Press, “It’s likely that North Korea will use the soldier for propaganda purposes in the short term and then as a bargaining chip in the mid- to long term.”
King was escorted as far as a customs checkpoint on Monday but left the airport before boarding his plane.
It was not clear where he spent time before joining the Panmunjom tour at the border between North and South Korea Tuesday afternoon. One woman on the tour with King initially thought his sprint across the border was some kind of a stunt.
King’s time in South Korea was troubled. Aside from his recent jail term, a court last February fined him $3,950 for assaulting an unidentified person and damaging a police vehicle in Seoul last October.
In that ruling, a transcript of the verdict said King had also been accused of punching a 23-year-old man at a Seoul nightclub, though the court dismissed that charge because the victim didn’t want King to be punished.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that King “willfully and without authorization” crossed into North Korea.
He said the U.S. was “closely monitoring and investigating the situation.”
“I’m absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troops,” Austin said, “and so, we will remain focused on this.”
King is the first known American held in North Korea in nearly five years.
Each detention has set off complicated diplomatic negotiations.
King’s mother told ABC News she was shocked when she heard her son had run into North Korea.
“I can’t see Travis doing anything like that,” said Claudine Gates of Racine, Wisconsin.
Gates said she last heard from her son “a few days ago,” when he told her he would return soon to Fort Bliss in the U.S. state of Texas.
She added she just wanted “him to come home.”
Cases of Americans or South Koreans defecting to North Korea are rare, though more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea to avoid political oppression and economic difficulties since a truce ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
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