US soldier who crossed into North Korea asks for asylum

2023-08-16 03:37:53

North Korea is “investigating” the US soldier who crossed its border last month, according to Pyongyang state media, adding that the soldier has asked for asylum in the country after feeling mistreated in the US Army.

“Travis King (name of the American soldier) has confessed that he decided to come to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (official name of the country) because harbored unease about inhumane treatment and racial discrimination within the Army of the United States,” the state agency KCNA said in a note today.

This is the first confirmation from the regime’s media about the situation of King, who crossed the Military Demarcation Line on July 18 and entered North Korean territory while on a sightseeing tour of the Joint Security Zone (JSA) in the heart of the border between the two Koreas.

Pyongyang, however, was in contact with the United States about the situation of the soldier, who is believed to have been detained by the regime since he crossed the border, according to what the Pentagon and the United Nations Command in Korea had indicated.

Travis King “illegally entered the territory” of North Korea on the 18th and “was under the control of North Korean soldiers” having deliberately entered the North Korean zone across the military demarcation line, according to the KCNA.

The US soldier “expressed his desire to seek asylum” in North Korea “or in a third country”, signaling his “disillusionment with the inequality in American society”, according to the Pyongyang propaganda outlet, which adds that the investigation into King “keep going”.

The Pentagon said late last month that it had made no progress in contacts or possible negotiations with North Korea over the soldier, and that it did not know what condition he was in.

King, 23, crossed the border north after spending 48 days in a South Korean prison workshop for failing to pay the fine he charged in February for kicking and damaging a police car in Seoul.

As a disciplinary measure, Washington decided to repatriate him, but King fled from Incheon International Airport, which serves Seoul, where he was to take a flight back to the United States, and the next day booked a JSA sightseeing tour that he took advantage of to cross into Korea. from North.