North Korea is not responding to US attempts to discuss the American soldier who crossed the heavily armed border and whose prospects for a quick release are unclear when military tensions are high and communication channels inactive.
Pte Travis King, who was supposed to be heading to Fort Bliss, Texas, after finishing a prison sentence in South Korea for assault, ran into North Korea while on a civilian tour of the border village of Panmunjom on Tuesday. He is the first known American to be held in North Korea in nearly five years.
“Yesterday the Pentagon reached out to counterparts in the [North] Korean people’s army. My understanding is that those communications have not yet been answered,” Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the US state department, said on Wednesday in Washington.
Miller said the White House, the Pentagon and the state department were working together to gather information about King’s wellbeing and whereabouts.
The motive for King’s border crossing is unknown. A witness on the same civilian tour said she initially thought his dash was a stunt until she heard an American soldier on patrol shouting for others to try to stop him. But King crossed the border in a matter of seconds.
The 23-year-old was serving in South Korea as a cavalry scout with the 1st Armored Division. Having been convicted of crimes in South Korea, he could be discharged from the military and face other potential penalties.
In February, a Seoul court fined him 5m won (£3,040) for assaulting an unidentified person and damaging a police vehicle in Seoul last October, according to a transcript of the verdict obtained by the Associated Press.
The ruling said King had also been accused of punching a man at a Seoul nightclub, though the court dismissed that charge because the victim did not want King to be punished.
The US secretary of the army, Christine Wormuth, said on Thursday that King “would have faced additional consequences” had he returned to the US as planned, though it was unclear if jail time was on the table.
He “had assaulted an individual in South Korea and had been in custody of the South Korean government and was going to come back to the United States and face the consequences in the army. And I’m sure that he was grappling with that,” she said.
“He may not have been thinking clearly, frankly, but we just don’t know.”
Wormuth said she was worried for King. She told the Aspen Security Forum: “It makes me very, very concerned that Pte King is in the hands of the North Korean authorities … I worry about how they may treat him.”
It was not clear how King spent the hours between leaving the airport on Monday and joining the Panmunjom tour on Tuesday. The US army realised he was missing when he did not get off the flight in Texas as expected.
King’s relatives said the soldier may have felt overwhelmed by his legal troubles and possible discharge from the military. They described him as a quiet loner who did not drink or smoke and enjoyed reading the Bible.
North Korea has previously held a number of Americans who were arrested for anti-state, espionage and other charges. But no other Americans were known to be detained since North Korea expelled Bruce Byron Lowrance in 2018.
During the cold war, a small number of US soldiers who fled to North Korea later appeared in North Korean propaganda films.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said: “North Korea is not going to ‘catch and release’ a border-crosser because of its strict domestic laws and desire to deter outsiders from breaking them.
“However, the Kim regime has little incentive to hold an American citizen very long, as doing so can entail liabilities.”
Other experts say it is unlikely North Korea will return King easily as he is a soldier who appeared to voluntarily enter North Korea, though many previous US civilian detainees were released after the US sent high-profile missions to Pyongyang to secure their freedom.
The US and North Korea, who fought during the 1950-53 Korean war, still have no diplomatic ties. Sweden has provided consular services for Americans in past cases, but Swedish diplomatic staff reportedly have not returned to North Korea since it ordered foreigners to leave at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“What I will say is that we here at the state department have engaged with counterparts in South Korea and with Sweden on this issue, including here in Washington,” Miller said.
Jeon Ha-kyu, a spokesperson for South Korea’s ministry of defence, said on Thursday his department was sharing related information with the US-led UN command in South Korea, without elaborating.
Currently, there are no known, active dialogues between North Korea and the US or South Korea.
North Korea has been increasing its criticism of the US over its recent moves to bolster its security commitment to South Korea.
Earlier this week, the US deployed a nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time in four decades. North Korea later test-fired two missiles with the potential range to strike the South Korean port where the US submarine docked.
Source: The Guardian
