A U.S. Army soldier who intentionally crossed from South Korea is believed to be in North Korean custody, the Defense Department said Tuesday.
The service member “willfully and without authorization” crossed the military demarcation line during a tour, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at the Pentagon.
“I’m absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troop,” Austin added. “We will remain focused on this.”
The Army identified the soldier as Private 2nd Class Travis T. King, a cavalry scout who enlisted in January 2021. King was visiting the Joint Security Area that separates North and South Korea while on an “orientation tour,” Army Col. Isaac Taylor, a spokesman for U.S. forces in South Korea, said in a statement.
The detention of King, the first American to be held in North Korea in nearly five years, is a diplomatic emergency during an already fraught stretch of relations between Pyongyang and Washington.
Nuclear negotiations collapsed in 2019, and North Korea has since escalated its ballistic missile testing, including a launch last week paired with a warning of consequences if the United States continues to operate surveillance flights in the region. On Tuesday, a U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine visited South Korea for the first time since the 1980s in a show of unity with its close ally. In an apparent response, North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea.
King had been punished for misconduct while serving in South Korea and was being sent home to the United States, according to a U.S. official. He had been recently released from a South Korean prison where he was held over assault charges, the Associated Press reported. U.S. officials have not publicly described his misconduct.
He did not get on his scheduled flight after U.S. military personnel took him to the airport, the official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The United States is trying to determine his whereabouts and condition, the official added. King has not served on any combat deployments, and his three medals listed in his provided service record were perfunctory awards given widely to soldiers who serve in South Korea.
The Joint Security Area is an 800-meter-wide bubble within the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea where diplomatic discussions can take place. The border area, one of the most fortified in the world, is overseen by the United Nations.
According to the United Nations Command, Korean nationals and foreign tourists are able to visit more than a dozen “Education and Orientation Program sites” within the demilitarized zone, where visitors can learn about the Korean War and the subsequent armistice agreement. It was not immediately clear whether the detained U.S. national was visiting one of those sites. Public tours to the area were suspended for most of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Joint Security Area in the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom is a popular civilian tourist destination and a rare opportunity for visitors to witness what is technically both North Korean and South Korean territory.
Guards from the two countries stand face to face near the iconic, identical light-blue buildings on each side of the line.
The 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, and both Koreas technically remain at war.
A handful of U.S. soldiers deserted to North Korea during the Cold War, including Charles Jenkins, who crossed over in 1965 after a night of drinking, unhappy with his assignment and worried he would be sent to Vietnam. Jenkins was apprehended and used by Pyongyang for propaganda movies before being repatriated to the United States to face military court-martial after 39 years.
He detailed the brutal conditions of his detention in a book, “The Reluctant Communist,” that said North Korean officials removed a U.S. Army tattoo on his arm with a knife. He pleaded guilty in a military court to desertion and aiding the enemy, and served a brief prison sentence. He lived in Japan with his wife, another former detainee in North Korea, until he died in 2017 at 77.
In a more recent case, Private 1st Class Joseph White disappeared over the North Korean border in 1982. North Korean officials later reported that he had drowned in a river there three years later.
Other Americans have been detained and charged with a slew of offenses by North Korea authorities after voluntarily entering the country. Most releases have come following top-level talks between governments officials.
The State Department in 2017 imposed a travel ban on U.S. nationals traveling to North Korea after the death of Otto Warmbier, an American student who traveled to Pyongyang with a tourist group in 2015 and was arrested and detained on charges of stealing a propaganda poster. After 17 months held captive, he was released to U.S. custody and died days after being flown home in a coma.
The U.S. government is unable to provide emergency services to its citizens in the country, the State Department notes in its travel advisory on North Korea, because no diplomatic or consular relations exist between Washington and Pyongyang.
South Korean and U.S. officials are meeting this week in Seoul, where the two countries are holding “nuclear consultation” talks designed to assure South Koreans of America’s commitment to defending its democratic ally in case of an attack from the North.
Classified documents leaked online exposed some friction between the United States and South Korea, including Seoul’s reservations about providing artillery ammunition to Ukraine. The documents also revealed vulnerabilities in South Korea’s air defenses, following drone incursions from the North late last year. It will probably take years for Seoul’s military to correct its shortcomings, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.
Source: The Washington Post
