North Korean state media said the US soldier who ran across the border is seeking refuge there because of unfair treatment in the Army, making its first statement regarding an episode that has been a concern for the Biden administration.
Army Private Second Class Travis King “confessed that he had decided to come over to the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army,” the country’s official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday, using an abbreviation for the formal name of North Korea.
King admitted he illegally entered North Korea, KCNA said. He is seeking refuge in North Korea or a third country because he “was disillusioned at the unequal American society,” the report added.
About 20 Americans have been detained by North Korea since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War and Pyongyang has used many of them for propaganda purposes.
The US Department of Defense “can’t verify the alleged comments,” spokesman Martin Meiners said, adding “we remain focused on his safe return.”
By stating that King committed a crime in illegal entry while also attributing comments to him critical of the US in the dispatch, North Korea may be showing that it’s undecided on whether to bring criminal charges against him or to use him for more messages critical of the US.
King, 23, a cavalry scout from Wisconsin, has been in the Army since January 2021. He’d been jailed for nearly two months in South Korea for assault and was set to fly to Texas, where he faced expulsion from the military.
But instead he left the airport and joined a tour to the Joint Security Area in the Panmunjom truce village, where he ran across the border and was later whisked away in a van surrounded by North Korean military personnel.
In previous cases under leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea has made an announcement of detention a few weeks after an incident, saying the move came after a questioning of the American.
The next steps have typically been a show trial a few weeks later in which the detained American is found guilty of trumped up crimes against North Korea and in some cases issues a confession likely designed by Pyongyang’s propaganda apparatus to tarnish the image of the US.
The last case of an American detained in North Korea was about five years ago when Bruce Lowrance was held for an illegal border crossing. Pyongyang just made one mention of him in a three-sentence dispatch disseminated by state media when he was deported about a month after his detention.
The King case is the first unauthorized border crossing by an American during the Biden administration, which is looking at ways to engage with Pyongyang at high levels after the Kim regime has shunned repeated requests for talks.
Since there are no formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang, Sweden has represented US interests in North Korea. Most diplomats from major democracies with embassies in Pyongyang left after the country sealed its borders at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Updates with details on Americans previously detained in North Korea)
