US soldier steps into unknown by fleeing into North Korea

The ribbon of territory that divides the Korean Peninsula into North and South is the most heavily fortified stretch of land in the world. It has watchtowers and banks of razor wire, tall fences linked to alarms and checkpoints and lookout posts on both sides of the border that are manned round the clock. It is 257-km (171-mile) long, four kilometers deep, and littered with between 1 and 2 million landmines.

The border is referred to as Freedom's Frontier by the US and UN troops that have been stationed here since the three-year Korean War was halted in an uneasy armistice in 1953.

The defenses are impressive, but there is a catch. From Seoul's perspective, it serves as a bulwark against a North Korean invasion. It's not designed to stop anyone defecting to the North, primarily because it is hard to imagine that anyone who has experienced life outside North Korea would choose a life in the world's most repressive state.

US Army Private Travis King, 23, has chosen to do just that.

King, a cavalry scout who has been in uniform since January 2021, had just been released after serving 47 days in a South Korean detention facility after an altercation with locals, US officials have confirmed. On Tuesday, he was being escorted back to the US to face disciplinary procedures at home. During the trip, however, he managed to evade his guards.

Taking a bus to the North Korean border

In civilian clothing, King was able to reach central Seoul and join a group of foreigners taking part in a bus tour to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Typically, a tour will include a visit to an observation deck that offers views into the North, as well as a stop to one of the tunnels dug by North Korean sappers, believed to be created as a potential military invasion route.

Then, the tourists would arrive at the Joint Security Zone in the village of Panmunjom, where the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. The village remains split by a concrete barrier to a North Korean and a South Korean part.

It was apparently in Panmunjom that King decided to make his move. Reports from other members of the tour group said on social media that they suddenly saw King crossing the embedded concrete blocks that mark the border, laughing loudly, before they were all hustled away.

Communicating via Swedish diplomats

North Korean authorities are believed to have detained King. Officials in Washington have stated that they are "engaging" with South Korea and Sweden, which has an embassy in Pyongyang and represents US interests there, in an effort to find a solution to the situation.

Relations between North Korea and the US are at historic lows at the moment, with the North launching an intercontinental ballistic missile last week that landed in the Sea of Japan. The US responded by flying nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over South Korea and dispatching the USS Kentucky to the southern port city of Busan. The visit is the first to a Korean port by a US Navy ballistic missile submarine in four decades. Continuing the spiral of escalation, North Korea fired two more short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan early on Wednesday morning.

"North Korea's latest firing of ballistic missiles is probably unrelated to the American soldier crossing the inter-Korean border, but such an incident doesn't help matters either," said Leif-Eric Easley, an associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

'Wild ambition' to see North Korean prison

"The Kim regime is likely to treat a border crosser as a military, intelligence and public health threat even though it is more likely that such an individual is mentally distressed and acting impulsively due to personal issues," he told DW. "Such unexpected events highlight the need for diplomatic channels between governments and regular communication between millitaries."

While King's motivations for crossing the border remain unclear, he is not the first American seeking to stay in North Korea.

In April 2014, Matthew Miller tore up his tourist visa after arriving at Pyongyang Airport. He was then sentenced to six years of hard labor by a North Korean court. Miller, then a 24-year-old from California, said he had a "wild ambition" to experience life in a North Korean prison to learn more about the nation's human rights situation.

He did not serve his full term, however. In November 2014, Miller was released together with Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary. Bae, from the state of Washington, had been arrested in November 2012 while leading a tour group and given a 15-year-term for "hostile acts," which included bringing in banned literature. The North Korean authorities also accused him of plotting to set up an underground group to overthrow the government.

Young US soldiers defect during Cold War

But the latest case involving Travis King would appear to have more in common with the six US servicemen who defected between 1962 and 1982.

Larry Abshier was 19 when he crossed into the North in 1962, where he remained until his death in 1983. James Dresnok, 21, followed the same year and died in the North in 2016. Jerry Parrish fled to the North in 1963, where he died in 1998.

Charles Jenkins defected in 1965 but married a Japanese woman who had been abducted by the North and the couple and their two children were permitted to move to Japan in 2004. He died in 2017.

Roy Chung disappeared in 1979 and North Korea claims he defected, although his family still insists he was abducted. He is believed to have died around 2004. The most recent defection before King was Joseph White, who requested asylum in the North in 1982, where he died three years later.

Finding a new home over the line

The life stories of Jenkins and Dresnok are also the subject of a 2006 documentary film "Crossing the Line," co-directed by Nicholas Bonner.

"Dresnok was facing a court martial and had just had enough of authority after coming from a very difficult upbringing, a broken background," Bonner told DW. "Joe had no regrets about leaving the US at all because none of his memories there were good; his family didn't want him so he grew up in an orphanage and later his wife left him, so he just wanted to get out."

Bonner believes Dresnok found a sense of "home" in the North, where he taught English and appeared as a villainous American in a number of propaganda films.

Dresnok died in Pyongyang in November 2016, still swearing allegiance to the North Korean regime that accepted him 54 years earlier.

At present, it's impossible to say if Travis King will take the same route. His mother told the US broadcaster ABC she was shocked by the news of his crossing.

"I can't see Travis doing anything like that," Claudine Gates was quoted as saying, adding she just wanted the young soldier to "come home."