An American has crossed over into the North as Navy nuclear ballistic missile submarine is visiting the south for the first time in decades.
A member of the U.S. armed forces is believed to be in detention in North Korea. That individual crossed the inter-Korean Military Demarcation Line at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom and did so deliberately, though their exact motivations remain unclear. This comes amid a surge in geopolitical friction on the Korean Peninsula, punctuated by the arrival today of the first U.S. Navy Ohio class nuclear ballistic missile submarine to visit the South in four decades.
The U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC), which oversees the Joint Security Area (JSA), disclosed the incident earlier today, but offered few details. The JSA, also known as the Truce Village, serves as an official meeting place for North and South Korean representatives, with shared spaces that they can enter from their respective sides of the demilitarized zone. It is also used for official engagements between the governments of the United States and North Korea, such as President Donald Trump’s famous meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2019. It is open to the general public through heavily structured tours.
“A U.S. National on a JSA orientation tour crossed, without authorization, the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” according to a UNC press release. “We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and are working with our KPA [Korean People’s Army] counterparts to resolve this incident.”
A machine translation of an accompanying version of that statement in Korean includes “and defected” after “without authorization.” At the time of writing, the UNC does not appear to have clarified this discrepancy.
“This was a deliberate decision on [the] part of the service member to cross the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone],” an anonymous U.S. official said, according to The Washington Post.
A spokesperson for U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) subsequently told Politico‘s Lara Seligman that the U.S. national in question was a member of the U.S. armed forces and had crossed over into the North “willfully.” USFK, which oversees the bulk of U.S. forces in South Korea, is separate from the UNC, but can provide support to the latter when requested. The commander of USFK, currently U.S. Army Gen. Paul LaCamera, is also head of the UNC, as well as the US-South Korean Combined Forces Command.
How exactly the individual came to be part of the tour at the JSA is unclear.
“Private 2nd Class Travis King, who was being escorted back to the United States from South Korea for disciplinary reasons,” according to CBS‘s report. “After going through airport security to leave, he somehow returned and managed to join a border tour group before crossing into North Korea.”
He had spent a month and a half in a detention facility in South Korea already, a U.S. official said, according to VOA‘s Carla Babb.
“A woman who said she was part of the tour group said they were at the last stop when they heard a loud ‘HA-HA-HA’ and saw the man, who’d been with the group all day, run ‘between two of the buildings and over to the other side,'” according to a separate report from NPR, citing a now-deleted Facebook post. “It took everybody a second to react and grasp what had actually happened… Then we were ordered into and through Freedom House and running back to our military bus.”
South Korean soldiers on guard at the JSA during a media tour on March 3, 2023. Jeon Heon-Kyun/Pool Photo via AP Jeon Heon-Kyun/Pool Photo via AP
While it is still unknown whether the individual in question intended to defect to North Korea, this would not be the first time a member of the U.S. military has done so. At least six other U.S. service members are known to have defected to North Korea since the Armistice Agreement in 1953 brought an end to open warfare on the Peninsula. The last of these individuals was Army Private Joseph T. White, who crossed into the North in 1982 via a section of the DMZ unconnected to the JSA.
This is also not the first time a JSA has been used as a jumping-off point for a defector. In 2017, North Korean soldier Oh Chong Song fled south via the Truce Village in a dramatic episode captured on camera where he sped to the inter-Korean border first in a jeep before racing across on foot. North Korean border guards were firing at Oh the entire time and he suffered five gunshot wounds, reportedly losing half his blood in the process and requiring life-saving surgery.
In 1984, 22-year-old Soviet citizen Vasily Yakovlevich Matuzok also braved gunfire to defect to the West via the JSA. Matuzok had traveled to North Korea ostensibly as a tourist. Three North Korean border guards and one South Korean soldier were killed in that incident. A member of the U.S. military was among at least six others wounded on both sides.
Regardless, today’s incident at the JSA comes at a time when South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration looks to be actively courting North Korean defectors with financial rewards based on recently released data. Yoon, who took office last year, has also taken a very hard line against North Korea, in general.
Furthermore, Yoon has pushed for greater security guarantees from the United States, especially in regard to nuclear deterrence. The arrival today of the U.S. Navy’s Ohio class nuclear ballistic missile submarine USS Kentucky in South Korea’s port of Busan is a direct result of a new nuclear policy-focused agreement, called the Washington Declaration, which the two countries announced in April. You can read more about this in detail here.
The Ohio class nuclear ballistic missile submarine USS Kentucky arriving in South Korea’s port of Busan on July 18, 2023. USN
The Ohio class cruise missile submarine USS Michigan in Busan in June 2023. USN
“The United States should stop a foolish act that could put its security at risk by provoking us,” Kim Yo Jong, Deputy Department Director of the Publicity and Information Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Kim Jong Un’s sister, said yesterday, according to state media. “The United States is being delusional if it believed that it could stop our advancement and achieve irreversible disarmament by temporarily halting joint military drills, deployment of strategic assets or easing of sanctions.”
Kim Yo Jong, among other North Korean officials, also warned last week that U.S. military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft could be shot down if they continue to fly in certain areas of the East Sea. Authorities in North Korea claim that there has been a recent uptick in aerial ISR activity over what North Korea claims as its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the East Sea. It is worth noting that international law makes clear that a country cannot claim full sovereignty over the seas and airspace within an EEZ. These zones typically extend well beyond formal national boundaries.
North Korea has also been trying to launch what it says are spy satellites into space, albeit unsuccessfully so far. The most recent of those launches came in May, after which South Korean authorities were able to recover various components of the space launch rocket.
There continue to be concerns that the government in Pyongyang may be moving toward restarting nuclear weapon testing, as well.
All told, while much about the circumstances surrounding the U.S. service member crossing over into North Korea is still murky, it is clearly a major international incident that could have significant ramifications.
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
