Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed on July 18 that a U.S. soldier crossed the border into North Korea, saying the individual willfully did so.
Earlier in the day, the U.S.-led U.N. Command overseeing the Demilitarized Zone confirmed that a U.S. citizen was on tour around the Korean border village of Panmunjom before that person crossed the border into North Korea without proper authorization. It didn’t specify whether the individual is a soldier, while Pyongyang hasn’t issued a public response.
“We’re very early in this event, and so there’s a lot that we’re still trying to learn, but what we do know is that one of our service members who was on a tour willfully and without authorization crossed the military demarcation line,” Mr. Austin told reporters in Washington.
U.S. officials are “closely monitoring and investigating the situation, and working to notify the soldier’s next of kin and engaging to address this incident,” Mr. Austin said, adding that the soldier is believed to be in North Korean custody. “I’m absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troop. And, so, we will remain focused on this.”
Details about the soldier, including his hometown and what additional charges he will face, weren’t immediately available. It was also unclear how the soldier managed to leave the airport while he was being escorted.
Pentagon officials haven’t publicly commented on the allegations that Pvt. King was the soldier who entered the border. The Department of Defense didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.
Cases of Americans or South Koreans defecting to North Korea are rare, although more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea to avoid political oppression and economic difficulties since the end of the 1950–1953 Korean War.
Panmunjom, located inside the 154-mile-long Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), has been jointly overseen by the U.N. Command and North Korea since its creation at the close of the Korean War. Bloodshed and gunfire have occasionally occurred there, but it has also been a venue for numerous talks and is a popular tourist spot.
“I thought it was a bad joke at first, but when he didn’t come back, I realized it wasn’t a joke, and then everybody reacted and things got crazy,” the unnamed witness said. “It was on the way back in the bus, and we got to one of the checkpoints ... someone said we were 43 going in and 42 coming back.”
Known for its blue huts straddling concrete slabs that form the demarcation line, Panmunjom draws visitors from both sides who want to see the Cold War’s last frontier. No civilians live in Panmunjom. In the past, North and South Korean soldiers have faced off within yards of each other.
Tours to the southern side of the village reportedly drew about 100,000 visitors a year before the coronavirus pandemic, when South Korea restricted gatherings to slow the spread of COVID-19. The tours resumed fully last year. During a short-lived period of inter-Korean engagement in 2018, Panmunjom was one of the border sites that underwent mine-clearing operations by North and South Korean army engineers as the Koreas vowed to turn the village into a “peace zone,” where tourists from both sides could move about with more freedom.
A small number of U.S. soldiers went to North Korea during the Cold War, including Charles Jenkins, who deserted his Army post in South Korea in 1965 and fled across the DMZ. He appeared in North Korean propaganda films and married a Japanese nursing student who had been abducted from Japan by North Korean agents. He died in Japan in 2017.
