He is the first American to be detained in North Korea since Bruce Byron Lowrance, who was arrested for crossing the border from China in 2018. According to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J Austin, a soldier has been taken into custody by the government of dictator Kim Jong-un for illegally and voluntarily crossing from South Korea to North Korea on Tuesday, July 18.
And this time, the reasons are all even more confusing. “We are only at the beginning of the case, and we are still trying to learn a lot of things. But what we do know is that one of our soldiers, who was on a mission, deliberately and without authorization crossed the military demarcation line”, confirmed the Secretary of State on Tuesday. “We believe he is being held by the DPRK (Editor’s note: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). We are closely monitoring the situation, we are investigating, we are trying to inform the soldier’s relatives and we are committed to resolving this incident. As far as my concerns go, I care first and foremost about the welfare of our troops,” he continued.
Who is he ?
According to the New York Times, the military second class is “identified as Travis T. King”. Anonymous official sources from the American daily indicate that the man had recently been released from a South Korean prison after being arrested for “assault”, where he would have served a sentence of around 2 months, according to AFP.
Aged 23 and enlisted in 2021, ihe occupied according to the BBC a role of “cavalry scout, reconnaissance specialist” and “was originally assigned to an element of the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division in South Korea”.
How did he cross the border?
After his detention in South Korea, US military authorities planned to send him to Fort Bliss, Texas, for further disciplinary action. Escorted to the airport, the soldier would then have joined a guided tour of the common security zone located within the “DMZ” instead of boarding, before breaking away from the group and running across the border. Despite a chase, the tour guides were unable to stop him.
What is the “Common Security Zone”?
A US soldier crosses the border into North Korea
© / afp.com/Valentin RAKOVSKY, Sabrina BLANCHARD
The Joint Security Area (JSA), also known as “Panmunjom”, is the only point of contact between the two Koreas within the approximately 240 km long Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). It includes an 800-by-400-meter village, a collection of buildings clustered around three iconic blue-painted shelters, about 48 km north of Seoul. Created as part of the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War 70 years ago next week, it is overseen by the North Korean People’s Army and the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission united.
Outside the buildings, a strip of concrete on the ground marks the border. In June 2019, former President Donald Trump crossed the border at Panmunjom and walked twenty paces to the base of a building in North Korea to greet Kim Jong-un, becoming the first US president to set foot in this extremely isolated country. To date the United States and North Korea have no official diplomatic relations and American interests in the country are represented by the Swedish Embassy. Relations between North Korea and the United States have even deteriorated in recent years, as the North has stepped up its nuclear and missile programs, in defiance of international sanctions.
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cross the Military Demarcation Line separating North and South Korea at the Panmunjom Common Security Zone and Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on June 30 2019
© / afp.com/Brendan Smialowski
What will happen to the soldier?
Following this surprising incident, the State Department declared that it was not yet in contact with North Korea, but that the Pentagon had tried to do so. “We understand that the Pentagon has made contact with its counterparts in North Korea. “It is the main agency, and I defer to it to comment on the nature of these contacts,” the spokesperson said. .
The fate of US citizens detained in North Korea is not always clear. In 2016, American student Otto Warmbier was arrested in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster from the wall of his hotel. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After being held for 17 months in North Korea, the 20-year-old was flown to Ohio in a coma in June 2017. He died a week later.
Others are released voluntarily, while still others are only released when prominent Americans get involved, such as former President Bill Clinton. In 2018, North Korea released three American detainees after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Pyongyang to pick them up, as a diplomatic gesture ahead of Kim Jong-un’s meeting with Donald Trump in Singapore. .