EThe day after American soldier Travis King crossed the military demarcation line on the border with North Korea in South Korea without permission on Tuesday, more details about his background are becoming known. South Korean authorities confirmed on Wednesday, according to the BBC, that King was released from prison on July 10 and was to be flown back to his homeland.
King was serving a two-month sentence in South Korea for assaulting two South Koreans. As Bloomberg reports, the Wisconsin-born American should be flown back to the United States to be discharged from military service there. At the airport, he was escorted through security and left in the waiting area for his flight to Fort Bliss, Texas.
He escaped from there on Tuesday and joined a tour group to visit the Joint Security Area – also known as Panmunjeom – in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. According to ABC News, it’s still unclear how he bought a ticket for the tour.
Laughing across the border
King is said to have left the tour group and laughed across the border to North Korea. BBC quotes an eyewitness as saying: “At first I thought it was a bad joke. But when he didn’t come back, I realized it wasn’t fun.”
The United Nations said on Twitter on Tuesday: “We believe he is currently in the custody” of North Korea. The UN has contacted the North Korean army “to clarify this incident”. The US Department of Defense said it was concerned about King’s well-being. The current situation is being “closely monitored and investigated”. The US forces stationed in South Korea are included in the investigation.
Soldier’s mother speaks out
The mother of the US soldier, Claudine Gates, was shocked when she heard that her son had crossed the border. She told ABC News, “I can’t imagine Travis doing something like that.” The US military informed her on Tuesday morning. She had been in contact with her son a few days earlier. He told her that he would soon be returning to his base at Fort Bliss. She added that she just wanted him to come home.
The US State Department imposed a travel ban on Americans in 2015 after the death of American student Otto Warmbier after being imprisoned in North Korea. Donald Trump became the first American president to cross the border into North Korea in 2019. In this safety zone he met Kim Jong-un.
As early as January last year, one person crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea. While escape attempts from the internationally isolated North to South Korea are more common, they are very rare in the opposite direction. The demilitarized zone is almost 250 kilometers long and several kilometers wide. It separates the Korean Peninsula from coast to coast.
Usually, the escape does not take place via the border fortified with mines and surveillance systems, but via the less monitored border to China. More than 30,000 people are said to have fled the country since the end of the Korean War in 1953.