This is all the Army's fault. They knew this nigger was nothing but
trouble. They should have locked him up until the plane was ready to
leave. If he caused trouble over the ocean, open a door and kick his
ass out.
(Bloomberg) -- North Korea detained a US soldier who intentionally
crossed the border from South Korea in an apparent effort to escape
being sent home after being charged with assault, according to an
American official.
The Army identified the soldier as Private Second Class Travis King, 23,
a cavalry scout in the Army since January 2021 who had received a number
of awards. But a US official familiar with the case, who asked not to be
identified, said there was more to the story.
King, who is from Wisconsin, had been released from South Korean
detention where he had been held on charges of assaulting two Koreans
and was facing formal separation from the military for a foreign
conviction, the official said. He was escorted through security and
customs at an airport and was then left alone for a flight to Fort
Bliss, Texas, to receive the separation notice, according to the
official.
Instead, King left the airport and joined a private companys tour of
the Korean border village of Panmunjom before bolting across the border,
the official said. Kings disciplinary record was reported earlier by
the Associated Press.
A service member on an orientation tour willfully and without
authorization crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic
Peoples Republic of Korea, Colonel Isaac Taylor, an Army spokesman,
said in a statement Tuesday. We believe he is currently in DPRK
custody. He said the US military was working with its North Korean
counterparts to resolve this incident.
It was unclear how King made his way from the airport to the tour, which
usually requires reservations made in advance. A person who was on the
Panmunjom tour told CBS News that a man in the group gave out a loud
laugh and then ran between some buildings that straddle the border.
Apart from the assault, the suspected border-crosser also kicked and
broke the door of a police car in Seoul last October, shouting
profanities directed at the police and US army when taken into custody,
court records showed. He was fined 5 million won ($4,000) by a district
court in the city over the incident, according to the records.
Kings mother, Claudine Gates, told ABC News she just wants her son to
come home and was shocked to hear he had entered North Korea.
I cant see Travis doing anything like that, ABC quoted her as saying.
As of noon on Wednesday, North Korea had not commented on the incident.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Tuesday that he was
closely monitoring the situation but didnt elaborate on the incident.
Although South Korean and American soldiers keep a close eye on those
who visit the area, the border between the Koreas in the Joint Security
Area in the Panmunjom so-called truce village is marked by a concrete
slab only a few inches off the ground and is easy to cross.
The North Korean military presence has dropped significantly in the JSA
since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Since there are no formal diplomatic relations between Washington and
Pyongyang, Sweden has acted as the protecting power for the US in North
Korea. The Swedish Foreign Ministry referred questions about the
incident to US authorities.
Unauthorized crossings into North Korea by westerners are rare and
usually occur at the border with China, which is less heavily patrolled
than the border between the two Koreas. The peninsula is divided by a
2.5-mile wide Demilitarized Zone protected by razor wire fencing,
landmines and hundreds of thousands of military personnel positioned on
either side.
In 2017, the death of a young American, Otto Warmbier, after more than a
year of captivity in North Korea, infuriated the US. Warmbier, a
University of Virginia student who was arrested for pulling down a sign
in Pyongyang in January 2016 while on a tour, had been sentenced to 15
years in prison.
In 2019, Alek Sigley, an Australian who had been living in Pyongyang,
was released from detention in North Korea. Sigley a postgraduate
student at Kim Il Sung University ran tours for foreign students and
posted about the country on social media until his arrest.
Many of the Americans detained in North Korea get sentenced to years of
hard labor but are typically released several months later after the
intervention by the US and its partners.
--With assistance from Ryan Teague Beckwith, Roxana Tiron, Sangmi Cha,
Shinhye Kang and Brian Fowler.
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