A U.S. soldier facing disciplinary action entered the custody of North Korea when he willfully crossed the border without authorization, according to officials from the Pentagon and the United Nations body that oversees the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
The soldier has been identified as Pvt. 2nd Class Travis King, who has been in the Army since January 2021 and was on a Korean force rotation, according to army spokesman Bryce Dubee.
It was reported that King was detained on assault charges in a South Korean prison and was in the process of being sent back to the United States.
“We believe he is currently in DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) custody and are working with our KPA counterparts to resolve this incident,” the U.N. Command said.
Authorities said that King was on his way to the airport to be flown to Fort Bliss in Texas when he sneaked out and joined a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom.
An official of the Pentagon said Travis King who was dressed in civilian clothing at the time of the incident, was facing disciplinary action.
A woman who said she was part of the tour group said they were at the last stop when she heard a loud “HA-HA-HA” laughter and saw the man, who’d been with them all day, run “between two of the buildings and over to the other side.”
“It took everybody a second to react and grasp what had actually happened,” she wrote in a Facebook post that’s since been deleted. “Then we were ordered into and through Freedom House and running back to our military bus.”
The request for the release of the detained U.S. soldier poses another fresh challenge amidst the not-too-good relationship between America and North Korea.
This is coming after many “show of power” conducted by leader Kim Jong Un who has been testing increasingly powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) in recent months.
Last week, an ICBM capable of hitting the U.S. flew for a longer time than any of the previous missiles tested.
The United States responded by sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the shallow waters off the Korean Peninsula.
The White House has tried to talk North Korea out of its nuclear weapons development, offering to ease the many sanctions levied on the state, but failed. The last negotiation with Donald Trump in 2019 had the US former president saying he didn’t want to agree to a “bad deal.”
The heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which is mined on both sides, separates North Korea from South Korea. the two Koreas, and serves as the de facto international border.
U.S. citizens are warned against traveling to North Korea due to “the continuing serious risk of arrest and long-term detention of U.S. nationals,” including the “critical threat of wrongful detention.”
The red-travel alert on North Korea started after a U.S. college student named Otto Warmbier who was touring the area, was detained by North Korean authorities. Warmbier was released to the U.S. in a coma in 2017 and died two days later.