Is he alive? The fate of the US soldier who crossed the border into North Korea a week ago remains unclear. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un continues to test rockets.
Munich/Pyongyang – On the day that US soldier Travis King illegally crossed the border into North Korea, the country’s state media reported on technical innovations in coal mining and successes in fish farming. On the other hand, the KCNA news agency, the party newspaper, lost the spectacular border crossing Rodong Sinmun and all the other media brought into line not a word. It is a state-mandated silence that continues to this day.
The case is spectacular: a week ago, on July 17, members of the US military took King to Incheon Airport near Seoul. The soldier, who was stationed in South Korea, had previously been in custody for nearly two months on charges of assault and was due to return to the United States. However, after passing through border controls, King left the airport again, claiming that he had lost his passport.
The next morning, King joined a tour group and embarked on a 10-hour tour of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the heavily secured border area between North and South Korea. There he left his group and crossed the demarcation line that separates the two warring states. According to eyewitnesses, the 23-year-old laughed out loud before he left at around 3:30 in the afternoon North Korea disappeared. He may have been afraid that further disciplinary sanctions could await him in the USA.
US soldier missing in North Korea: “I’m worried about him, honestly”
Where King is, how he is doing, yes, whether he is still alive at all – all of this is currently unclear. “I’m worried about him, honestly,” said Christine Wormuth last week, who is responsible for US Army personnel at the US Department of Defense, among other things. Wormuth recalled the case of US citizen Otto Warmbier, who was sentenced to 15 years in a labor camp in North Korea in 2016 and died shortly after returning to the US in 2017. Warmbier fell into a coma in North Korean custody.
Communication with the regime of dictator Kim Jong Un is currently proving to be difficult because the USA does not have its own embassy in North Korea. In the past, it was usually the Swedish mission that raised US concerns in Pyongyang; However, the embassy was closed a few months after the start of the corona pandemic, as was the German representation in Pyongyang. Nevertheless, representatives of the USA and North Korea regularly via a kind of hotline, but so far without the Americans having found out anything about King’s fate.
In the meantime, the responsible United Nations command has also started talks with the regime in Pyongyang. Lt. Gen. Andrew Harrison, who acts as deputy commander of the multinational force, said on Monday: “Our main concern is the well-being of Soldier King.” Harrison did not want to give details, but he spoke of a “very difficult and complex situation”. Nobody knows how the story will end.
North Korea tests ballistic weapons – US sends nuclear submarines to South Korea
Korea expert Andrei Lankov told Reuters news agency: “I assume that the soldier could stay in North Korea at least until the end of the Covid restrictions, which could take another two, three or four years.” Pyongyang had its borders closed in early 2020 China and Russia closed.
For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, an official foreign delegation is expected in North Korea in the middle of the week. A Politburo member from China then travels to Pyongyang to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War. China is one of the Kim regime’s few allies. However, it is uncertain whether further opening steps will follow.
Meanwhile, the situation on the Korean peninsula is extremely tense. North Korea has been firing ballistic missiles into the sea for days, most recently in the night from Monday to Tuesday (local time), as reported by the South Korean news agency Yonhap, citing the country’s military. UN decisions actually ban North Korea from such weapons tests.
The USA and South Korea recently reacted to the increasing threats of the Kim regime with closer cooperation. To deter the North, a nuclear-armed American submarine has made a station in Busan, South Korea, for the first time since 1981; on Monday, another nuclear submarine also docked in the port of Jeju Island. This latest escalation does not bode well for the fate of soldier Travis King.
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