A US soldier who was detained in South Korea for nearly two months is likely trapped in North Korea after crossing the guarded border between the two countries without authorization, officials said.
The soldier, identified by the US military as Travis King, who has been in the military since 2021, crossed the border “voluntarily and without authorization,” said Colonel Isaac Taylor, spokesman for US forces in Korea.
WORLD: North American crosses border between Koreas without permission and is detained by North Korea. pic.twitter.com/tBcipe6lRg
– STOPPED (@choquei) July 18, 2023
The UN command said King made an orientation visit to the Joint Security Area (JSA) and added that he believed he was in North Korean custody. The body is working with Pyongyang’s military to “solve the incident”.
A South Korean government source told AFP King was released on July 10 after serving nearly two months in a South Korean prison on charges of assault in 2022, but was not being held at the time.
The US channel CBS News, citing US government officials as sources, reported that a low-ranking soldier was sent home for disciplinary reasons but managed to leave the airport and join a group of tourists.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said Washington is “closely monitoring and investigating the situation.”
Since the Korean War (1950-1953) ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty, the two countries are still technically in conflict and the guarded border consists of a demilitarized zone. Soldiers from both states work face-to-face in the Joint Security Area in northern Seoul, under the supervision of the UN command.
In 2019, then-US President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the border town of Panmunjom, and was also on North Korean territory when he crossed the border.
A witness, who said he had been on the same tour, told CBS News that the group had been visiting one of the nearby buildings when “this guy let out a resounding ‘ha ha ha’ and started running between the two buildings.”
“At first I thought it was a bad joke, then when he didn’t come back I realized it wasn’t a joke and then everyone reacted and things got out of hand,” he explains.
Hours later, the South Korean General Staff announced that North Korea had launched two short-range ballistic missiles into the Baltic Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan. The launches appear to have been in response to Tuesday’s arrival of a US nuclear submarine in the South Korean port of Busan, the first deployment of such a ship to the peninsula since 1981.
The shooting is hardly associated with the soldier’s case, “but incidents like this don’t help,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
“The Kim Jong-un regime is likely to treat the border crossing as a threat to the military, intelligence and public health, even though it is more likely that the individual was mentally disturbed for personal reasons and acted impulsively,” he added.
North Korea closed its borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020, and has not yet reopened its crossings. It also significantly reduced security on the DMZ side. Under armistice protocol, no American or South Korean is allowed to cross the border to retrieve the American soldier.
The incident comes at a time when relations between the two Koreas are at a minimum. Diplomatic action has stalled and Kim Jong-un has ordered his country’s weapons development, including tactical nuclear weapons.
South Korea and the United States have intensified defense cooperation with several joint military exercises. Some maneuvers will be carried out in the coming month.
Despite the tension, the demilitarized zone is usually quiet. In 1976, two American soldiers were killed by North Koreans over a tree dispute.
The last JSA defector occurred in 2017, when a North Korean soldier drove a military vehicle and crossed the border despite existing gunfire.
Source: DN
