North Korea stayed silent Wednesday about its detention of a U.S. soldier who dashed across the Koreas’ heavily militarized border even as he had been ordered to return to the United States to face possible discipline and discharge from the military.
Private 2nd Class Travis King ran into North Korea while on a tour of the Demilitarized Zone on Tuesday, a day after he was supposed to leave for a military base in the U.S. King had been released from a South Korean prison last week after serving nearly two months for assault.
His immediate fate in North Korea was unknown, but the Pyongyang government has held Americans in the past and not quickly released them. The two countries have no diplomatic relations and tensions between them remain high.
On Wednesday, North Korea test-fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in an apparent protest of the deployment of a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time in decades.
The arrival of the USS Kentucky, capable of launching Trident II ballistic missiles with a range of 12,000 kilometers, is a highly symbolic move signaling that Washington will stand with South Korea in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.
Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in South Korea, told The Associated Press, “It’s likely that North Korea will use the soldier for propaganda purposes in the short term and then as a bargaining chip in the mid- to long term.”
King was escorted as far as a customs checkpoint on Monday but left the airport before boarding his plane. It was not clear where he spent time before joining the Panmunjom tour at the border between North and South Korea Tuesday afternoon. One woman on the tour with King initially thought his sprint across the border was some kind of a stunt.
King’s time in South Korea was troubled. Aside from his recent jail term, a court last February fined him $3,950 for assaulting an unidentified person and damaging a police vehicle in Seoul last October.
In that ruling, a transcript of the verdict said King had also been accused of punching a 23-year-old man at a Seoul nightclub, though the court dismissed that charge because the victim didn’t want King to be punished.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that King “willfully and without authorization” crossed into North Korea. He said the U.S. was “closely monitoring and investigating the situation.”
“I’m absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troops,” Austin said, “and so, we will remain focused on this.”
King is the first known American held in North Korea in nearly five years. Each detention has set off complicated diplomatic negotiations.
King’s mother told ABC News she was shocked when she heard her son had run into North Korea.
“I can’t see Travis doing anything like that,” said Claudine Gates of Racine, Wisconsin.
Gates said she last heard from her son “a few days ago,” when he told her he would return soon to Fort Bliss in the U.S. state of Texas. She added she just wanted “him to come home.”
Cases of Americans or South Koreans defecting to North Korea are rare, though more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea to avoid political oppression and economic difficulties since a truce ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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