North Korea said Wednesday that a US soldier entered the country illegally in July due to social inequalities and racial discrimination in the US military.
The news from the official North Korean news agency KCNA is the first official confirmation by Pyongyang of the arrest of Travis King, who thus becomes the first American detained in the country in almost five years.
King, the subject of a disciplinary process by the US military, crossed the border “voluntarily and without authorization” on July 18, according to the command of the UN multinational force, which monitors compliance with the armistice between the two Koreas.
According to KCNA, King said he had decided to enter North Korea because he “held a grudge against inhumane mistreatment and racial discrimination within the US military.”
The agency added that King also expressed his willingness to seek asylum in North Korea or another country, saying he “was disillusioned with the inequalities in American society.”
King was jailed in South Korea for two months after a nightclub brawl and an incident with police in Seoul.
On July 10, he was released from prison to be escorted to the airport, where he was supposed to leave for a disciplinary hearing in the United States.
Instead, he managed to escape and joined a group visiting the border at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.
North and South Korea are technically still at war because they never signed a peace treaty, only an agreement to stop fighting.
Most of the border between the two Asian countries is fortified.
On many occasions, Pyongyang has detained Americans and used them as bargaining chips.
Soo Kim, an expert at the LMI consultancy and a former CIA analyst, told the Associated Press news agency that the KCNA report “is 100% North Korean propaganda.”
“King, as a US citizen detained in North Korea, has no influence on how the DPRK [República Popular Democrática da Coreia, nome oficial da Coreia do Norte] decides to tell his narrative,” said Soo Kim.
“Perhaps the regime will try to trade King’s life for financial concessions from the US. Most likely the negotiations will not be easy and Pyongyang will dictate the terms,” the analyst said.
The incident with Travis comes against a backdrop of heightened tension between the West and North Korean President Kim Jong-un.
North Korea’s defense minister accused the United States on Tuesday of plunging the Korean peninsula into imminent nuclear war and ruled out the possibility of resolving the conflict through negotiations.
Since the beginning of the year, the United States has transferred large quantities of nuclear weapons to South Korea, including a nuclear submarine, a strategic bomber and an atomic strike group aircraft carrier, Kang Sun-nam said in Moscow.
Source: TSF
