The low-ranking soldier, who had a disciplinary record with several warnings, was supposed to return to the United States in July, but he fled the airport, approached a group of tourists visiting the demilitarized zone that divides the peninsula, and crossed the border into North Korea.
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King, 23, was expected to face disciplinary action in the United States after he was involved in a bar fight, had an incident with police and was briefly detained in a South Korean prison.
The United States government had already reported that King crossed the border intentionally and without authorization, but until now North Korea had not commented on the matter.
“Travis King admitted that he illegally entered DPRK territory,” state news agency KCNA said, using the acronym for the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
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“During the investigation, Travis King confessed that he decided to come to the DPRK because he resented the mistreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army,” the note adds.
King “was held under the control of soldiers from the Korean People's Army,” according to the agency.
“He also expressed his desire to seek refuge in the DPRK or a third country, saying he was disillusioned with the inequality in American society,” KCNA highlighted.
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The United States government has no formal diplomatic ties with North Korea and, since that country closed its borders at the start of the pandemic, many embassies with a presence in Pyongyang have withdrawn their diplomats from the country.
The United Nations Command, which oversees the armistice that ended hostilities during the Korean War (1950-1953), said in July that it had begun discussions with Pyongang about the case.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that contact had been established with the North Koreans, but that it was not possible to know the soldier's status.
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KCNA did not release information about King's condition or the soldier's location. He also did not comment on the North Korean government's next steps.
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Soo Kim, a former CIA analyst and director of political practices at LMI Consulting, told AFP that the King announcement was pure propaganda.
“King's entry into North Korea offered Kim Jong Un's regime an opportunity in several ways. The first of them is, certainly, the possibility of negotiating with the United States for King’s release,” he said.
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The North Koreans are “tough negotiators,” which means it will not be easy for Washington to secure the release, the analyst added.
The country led by Kim Jong Un has a long history of detaining Americans to use them as bargaining chips in bilateral negotiations.
“It is also an opportunity for the regime’s propaganda: taking advantage of the situation to criticize the United States and express Pyongyang’s deep hostility towards Washington,” he added.
For Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korean Studies at the University of Oslo, “the fact that King is a black soldier has a certain propaganda value for the North Koreans”.
“The racism of white people and the mistreatment suffered by black people are points that North Korean propaganda tends to emphasize,” he told AFP.
The detention comes at one of the worst moments in relations between Seoul and Pyongyang: the North is in a race to develop nuclear weapons and the South is intensifying military exercises with the United States.
The two countries remain technically at war, after the 1950s conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
The border is heavily militarized, but the Joint Security Area (JSA) is separated only by a simple concrete wall, which makes it relatively easy to cross, despite the presence of soldiers on both sides.
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