“He screamed ha ha ha and ran”: how could an American soldier escape to North Korea?

This is one of the most heavily guarded borders in the world. One of the last to want to cross it without permission, a North Korean soldier in 2017, saw his car riddled with bullets along the way. And yet, according to US officials, on Tuesday a US soldier managed to “voluntarily and without permission” cross the border into North Korea. Explanations.

Private Travis King was released from prison in South Korea on July 10. He was serving a two-month prison sentence for assault and damage to a police car. He was supposed to be sent back to the United States for disciplinary reasons, but managed to leave the airport and join a group of visitors in the DMZ. The demilitarized zone is located in the village of Phanmunjom, where a truce was signed in July 1953 that ended hostilities in the Korean War.

“The Only Possible Place to Escape”

After visiting the first building in the “Joint Security Zone” (OSB), the man suddenly disappeared. “He yelled ‘ha ha ha’ very loudly and ran between the buildings. At first I thought it was a bad joke, but when he didn’t come back, I realized it wasn’t a joke. Then everyone understood, and it was crazy, ”a witness to the incident told CBS News.

According to Sanji University professor of military studies Choi Giil, Travis King chose this location “because it is the only possible place to escape while visiting the joint security zone.”

While most of the border between the two Koreas is fortified, at Panmunjom, where the Joint Security Area (JSA) is located, the border is marked only by a low concrete structure and is relatively easy to cross despite the stationing of soldiers on both sides. sides. They are no longer armed after the 2018 agreement and the North has significantly reduced its presence in the JSA following the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Important Exchange Currency”

However, cases of unauthorized crossings remain extremely rare, especially since the two countries are still considered technically “at war”. Former South Korean national security official Choi Gi-il told AFP that he felt Travis King acted “on impulse”. It “caught the US by surprise”.

“I don’t see Travis doing these things,” his mother, Claudine Gates, responded to ABC News. The fact that she was “shocked” by this news, the soldier’s mother learned a few days before. She understood that her son should return to the Fort Bliss base in East Texas (USA). She admitted that she just wanted “he came home.”

Travis King was reportedly arrested and is currently being held by North Korean authorities. “We believe that he is currently in the custody of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and we are working with our colleagues from the APC (Korean People’s Army) to resolve this incident,” the UN command said in a statement.

According to the ceasefire protocols, South Korean or American personnel cannot cross the border to pick up Travis King. According to Vladimir Tikhonov, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo, the detainee “has a certain propaganda value for the North Koreans”: “This is an important trump card. »

Cheong Sung-chan, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, takes the opposite view. Since Travis King appears to have gone to North Korea to avoid legal trouble, and not because of romantic notions of the Pyongyang regime, “it is likely that the North will deport him.”