Defector’s fate unsettled after North Korea confirms detention

SEOUL, South Korea — His status has been confirmed but his future remains a huge question mark one day after North Korea’s state media revealed that defecting U.S. Army Pvt. Travis King was alive and being detained.

U.S. Defense Department officials said Wednesday they had no way of confirming Pyongyang’s account of why the 23-year-old GI dashed across the border from South Korea on July 18. There is speculation in Seoul that Kim Jong-un’s regime could be preparing to use the private’s bizarre story as leverage to fend off criticism on its human rights record. The Biden administration had been seeking a U.N Security Council meeting on North Korean human rights for Thursday, the first such session in six years.

Citing an investigation into his case, the official KCNA news agency reported Wednesday morning in Pyongyang that Pvt. King, who is Black, defected because he “harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army.”

The soldier, thought to be the first American to be held by the North in more than five years, admitted that he had “illegally intruded” into North Korea. He “expressed his willingness to seek [refuge in North Korea] or a third country, saying that he was disillusioned with life at the unequal American society,” the report continued.

But one expert questioned the motive that the KCNA report implied, suggesting that a possible TV appearance would offer Americans a better opportunity to gauge the soldier’s true state of mind.

“We need to see [Pvt. King] when they televise him,” said Steve Tharp, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel with long experience in South Korea. “We can read his face while listening to his words.”

A U.S. Defense Department official, speaking on background, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that officials had no way to verify North Korea’s claims about Pvt. King. The official said the Pentagon was working through all available channels to bring Pvt. King home.

The soldier’s mother, Claudine Gates, spoke to Army officials Tuesday evening and appealed to North Korea to treat her son humanely, according to a statement released by the King family.

The KCNA statement was the first full acknowledgment by Mr. Kim’s regime that Pvt. King was in its custody.

On the day he crossed over, Pvt. King was part of a civilian tour group visiting the truce village of Panmunjom. The village is the only area in the heavily armed DMZ where the border is unblocked.

The soldier shocked a contingent of tourists and his escort of South Korean and U.S. troops by suddenly dashing across the border.

It emerged that the private soldier, who had gone AWOL before joining the tour, had earlier been incarcerated by South Korean authorities for violent behavior. He was facing repatriation to his home military base in Texas, there to be dishonorably discharged from the army.

U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, have made clear that Pvt. King’s well-being is their foremost priority and have sought his return to the U.S. That indicates a potential negotiation ahead.

Analysts said the KCNA reference to a “third country” that could potentially accept the American GI suggested the North may not be interested in holding Pvt. King indefinitely.

“It can be interpreted that the North has hinted at the possibility of sending him to a third country if he desires,” said Rep. Tae Yong-ho of the ruling People Power Party, in a statement carried by the Korea Times. “If North Korea really wants to keep holding onto the U.S. soldier, it would not have mentioned the option of him seeking asylum at all.”

U.S. citizens previously imprisoned in the country for such infractions as illegally crossing the border or spreading Christian tracts have been returned after high-level diplomatic interventions, including by former President Bill Clinton.

Not all such sagas end well. Visiting American student Otto Warmbier, who was tried on vague charges of subversion, was imprisoned for 17 months. He was returned, comatose, to the U.S. where he subsequently died, though his exact cause of death remains unknown.

If Pvt. King wishes to remain in North Korea, a handful of U.S. soldiers who deserted and defected between the 1960s and 1980s offer a precedent. All are now deceased, but they were offered refuge and lived in North Korea, working as language teachers and even playing the roles of villainous foreigners in North Korean films.

U.S. Navy prisoners seized in the 1968 capture of the spyship USS Pueblo managed to communicate their feelings to American audiences. In front of North Korean cameras, they offered what they told their captors was “the Hawaiian good luck sign” — but was in fact, “the finger.”

Mr. Tharp was dubious about the rationale offered by KCNA for the private’s decision to defect.

“It would not surprise me that he would not want to return to racism in the U.S.,” he said. “But I don’t think the racism in the military is nearly as big as the racial split in U.S. society, which has become enormous.”