A “conversation” has begun with North Korea over U.S. Army Private Travis King, who disappeared into the north after crossing the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the closed country and its southern neighbor on Tuesday, the US-lead security force for the region said Monday, according to media reports.
Gen. Andrew Harrison, United Nations Command (UNC) deputy commander, declined to provide additional details over the private due to the ongoing investigation after the U.S. military said he entered North Korea “willfully and without authorization,” CNN reported. It’s the first time since King dashed across the Joint Security Area (JSA) to the North Korean side the U.S. or a partner nation has been able to confirm contact with Pyongyang over the private.
“There is a mechanism that exists under the armistice agreement, whereby lines of communication are open between the UNC and the Korean People’s Army, and that takes place in the JSA. That process has started,” Harrison told journalists in Seoul, CNN reported.
“Obviously, there is so much welfare at stake, and clearly we’re in a very difficult and complex situation which I don’t want to risk by speculation or going into too much detail about the communications that are existing,” he said, according to CNN.
On Thursday, the Pentagon said no one in the outside world had heard any word from North Korean authorities and couldn’t be sure messages are penetrating the closed country, despite repeated efforts to contact the government through multiple sensitive channels. (RELATED: US Spy Aircraft Fled After North Korea Scrambled Jets, Kim Jong Un’s Sister Says)
“We want to bring him home. We don’t know his condition, we don’t know where he is, we don’t know the status of his health,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said.
King was supposed to fly from South Korea back to his home station in the U.S. for disciplinary action when he slipped out of the airport, joined a civilian tour group visiting the highly securitized North-South border and bolted across the border. The JSA is a collection of buildings inside the miles-wide DMZ that has separated North and South Korea since the 1953 armistice.
Witnesses say they saw King ushered into a van by North Korean soldiers and driven away, CNN reported, citing U.S. officials.
He was being held in a South Korean detention facility for charges related to a history of assault and was set to face administrative separation upon return to Fort Bliss, Texas, U.S. officials told CNN.
“I’m constrained by what I can say,” Harrison told reporters, according to CNN. “You may not get the answers.”
U.S. Private Travis T. King (wearing a black shirt and black cap) is seen in this picture taken during a tour of the tightly controlled Joint Security Area (JSA) on the border between the two Koreas, at the truce village of Panmunjom, South Korea, July 18, 2023. Sarah Leslie/Handout via REUTERS
The U.S. does not have official diplomatic relations with North Korea, relying on classified means of communication and international interlocutors like Sweden to engage with the communist nation. It leaves the United Nations Command, a multinational military force established in 1950 at the outset of the Korean War, to enforce the armistice between the two countries, facilitate diplomacy with North Korea and maintain stability in the DMZ, according to the UNC website.
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