US soldier’s dash to North Korea puts focus on border weak spot

For most of the border along the 38th parallel, the two Koreas are divided by fences, anti-tank barriers and a wide no-man’s-land filled with millions of landmines.

But nothing separates the two warring parties at the “joint security area” in the village of Panmunjom, where an armistice ending fighting in the Korean War was signed in 1953. For some, that can make it a source of temptation.

Jacco Zwetsloot, a former border zone tour guide for US troops stationed in South Korea, said many visitors to the JSA have admitted to a strange urge to step over into the isolated dictatorship ruled by the family of Kim Jong-un for the past 75 years.

“For some, it’s simply the lure of the forbidden,” Zwetsloot said. “For others, it is the absurdity of the situation.”

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While only a handful people have ever yielded to the temptation, the ease of the crossing was dramatically demonstrated this week when US army private Travis King made a sudden dash across the border.

King’s flight added a potential complication to escalating tensions between Pyongyang, and Washington and Seoul. It also sparked intense international speculation about the motivations of the 23-year-old serviceman from Wisconsin and how he could have been allowed to make his way to the border in the first place.

According to US officials, King had been escorted by US soldiers to security control at Seoul’s Incheon international airport on Monday afternoon.

King had been due to fly to Dallas for military disciplinary proceedings after serving time in South Korea for assault and criminal damage. Instead, he found his way back through security and into Seoul. The next day, he boarded a coach for a pre-booked tour of the border’s demilitarised zone, or DMZ.

The tour included entry to the JSA at Panmunjom, where tour groups are closely supervised by unarmed US and South Korean troops serving under the United Nations Command.

According to a witness account, King suddenly dashed over the gravel and concrete slabs marking the border.

“To our right, we hear a loud HA-HA-HA and one guy from OUR GROUP that has been with us all day runs in between two of the buildings and over to the other side!!” Mikaela Johansson, a member of the tour group, wrote on Facebook.

[ US soldier ‘was laughing’ as he crossed border to North Korea ]

Steve Tharp, a retired US army lieutenant colonel who has served in the JSA, said it was plausible that a fit young soldier with a head start could make it across before UN Command troops could respond.

While their precise rules of engagement are classified, he said it was unlikely that US or South Korean soldiers were authorised to chase someone into North Korean territory.

It was not the first time a US soldier crossed the inter-Korean border at a time of apparent personal crisis

King remains in the custody of North Korean authorities, who have not commented on the episode. His reasons for his actions remain unclear.

US army secretary Christine Wormuth said on Thursday that Washington had been unable to make contact with North Korean authorities about the case.

Wormuth confirmed King had been facing military discipline. “I am sure that he was grappling with that ... we obviously don’t know what was going through his mind,” she said, adding that she had no information suggesting he had ideological sympathies with Pyongyang.

The private’s uncle, Myron Gates, told NBC News that King had been grieving the death of a young cousin and his actions were “out of his character”.

It was not the first time a US soldier crossed the inter-Korean border at a time of apparent personal crisis.

In 1962, Private Larry Abshier, who was under the threat of disciplinary proceedings relating to alleged drug use, crossed the DMZ. A few months later, he was joined by Private James Dresnok, who had been caught forging an officer’s signature for permission to leave his base.

Two other US soldiers defected in 1965: Corporal Jerry Parrish and Charles Jenkins, a sergeant who wanted to avoid being sent to fight in Vietnam.

According to Jenkins’s memoir, the US servicemen were forced to study the teachings of North Korea’s founding ruler Kim Il-sung for 10 hours a day. They were also paraded to the outside world as proof of the superiority of the North’s political system and played villains in a TV series, Unsung Heroes, about a spy operating in Seoul.

Of the four, only Jenkins left North Korea alive. After marrying a Japanese abductee in 1980, he was allowed in 2004 to move to Japan, where he died in 2017. The others died in Pyongyang.

Andrei Lankov, professor of history at Kookmin University in Seoul, said King would probably hold little value for North Korea, either as an intelligence asset or propaganda tool. “They are no longer interested in the external promotion of their own ideology,” said Lankov.

North Korea has occasionally released American captives after visits to Pyongyang by high-level US delegations.

But Kim Jong-un has in effect sealed the country’s borders since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and appears uninterested in engaging with the US over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

[ The Irish Times view on North Korea’s missile tests ]

“[King] could be released quite soon, or alternatively they could hold him for years, even decades,” said Lankov. “What is certain is that his own views on the subject are no longer relevant.”

The episode raises questions about public access to the JSA, which was created in 1953 as a zone where personnel from both sides could move freely to facilitate negotiations for a full peace treaty.

The treaty was never agreed, but the area was retained to maintain direct communications. The boundary line within it was created after an incident in 1976 when two US soldiers were hacked to death by North Korean counterparts in a dispute over the pruning of a poplar tree.

Zwetsloot, who now presents a podcast for Seoul-based news service NK News, said: “The very existence of the zone can make people want to make a mockery of it.

“Animals don’t respect it – birds fly over it, insects walk over it, a stray cat could come back and forth – yet still humans cannot cross.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023