State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Wednesday that the communist rogue government of North Korea had refused contact from Washington attempting to discuss Pvt. 2nd Class Travis King, an American citizen who ran into North Korea on Tuesday.
King, believed to be 23 years old, had faced legal trouble during his time serving in South Korea, according to multiple American and South Korean media outlets. Recently released from a stint in a South Korean prison, King had received a military escort to Incheon International Airport in the greater Seoul area to board a flight to Texas. Instead of getting on the flight, King booked a tour of the Korean border. In the border “peace village” of Panmunjom, surrounded by his tour group, King reportedly began laughing loudly and crossed into North Korea.
King’s motives and whereabouts remain unknown at press time. The government of communist dictator Kim Jong-un has made no public statements on the matter.
Miller told reporters on Wednesday that Pyongyang had also failed to discuss the missing soldier with American authorities.
“In terms of contacts with foreign governments, yesterday the Pentagon reached out to counterparts in the Korean People’s Army. My understanding is that those communications have not yet been answered,” Miller said during a regular press briefing. “We retain a number of channels though [sic] which we can send messages to the DPRK [North Korea]. As you can imagine, in a situation like this, those discussions are quite sensitive and I’m not prepared to go into all the details at this time.”
“What I will say is that we here at the State Department have engaged with counterparts in South Korea and with Sweden on this issue, including here in Washington,” he offered.
“The White House, the Pentagon, we here at the State Department, and the UN are all continuing to work together on this matter to ascertain information about the well-being and whereabouts of Private King,” Miller asserted. “We are still gathering facts, and I want to be very clear that the administration has and will continue to actively work to ensure his safety and return him home to his family.”
The U.S. government has striven to emphasize that King chose to cross the border independently and his having done so has no apparent relationship to his status as a soldier.
A tourist from New Zealand captured a photo of U.S. Army Pvt. Travis King shortly before he ran into North Korea from the Demilitarized Zone that separates it from South Korea (TMX).
“A U.S. Service member on a JSA [Joint Security Area] orientation tour willfully and without authorization crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” Col. Isaac Taylor, a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), said on Tuesday. “We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and are working with our KPA counterparts to resolve this incident.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin similarly insisted in remarks on Tuesday that the soldier, whom the U.S. government had not identified yet, was not acting on U.S. military orders.
King’s relatives, speaking to various media outlets, expressed confusion and dismay regarding his disappearance into arguably the world’s most repressive country on Wednesday.
“It’s out of his character,” Myron Gates, King’s uncle, told NBC News. “I’ve never seen him get down like that, ever. Something’s going on. This is not his personality.”
Multiple relatives noted that King had lost a six-year-old cousin, King’nazir Gates, in February, and had struggled emotionally through the loss and his absence during the end of the boy’s life. Profiled in local news, Gates reportedly suffered from SPTLC 2, a genetic disorder “so rare doctors haven’t given it an official name.”
“Travis has got a lot going on in his mind, and we’re worried about him,” Carl Gates, King’nazier’s father, told NBC News in a report published on Wednesday. “Now we don’t know where he is, we don’t know what they’re doing to him, and we might not ever see him again.”
Multiple reports in South Korean media indicated that Travis King had struggled throughout his time in South Korea, resulting in criminal charges. Court documents obtained by the outlet NK News reportedly revealed that he had been arrested on at least two occasions.
“Early in the morning on Oct. 8 last year, police arrested King in Seoul after receiving a report about him assaulting another person. He continued being ‘aggressive’ toward the victim and police officers and was detained in a patrol car,” NK News reported, citing South Korean court documents that accused King of shouting, “Fuck Korean, fuck Korean army, fuck Korean police.”
He had recently concluded time in prison before his flight to Texas, according to several reports.
King’s flight to North Korea occurred at a particularly sensitive time in Washington-Pyongyang relations. While America and North Korea have remained technically at war for over half a century, communication cratered following the inauguration of leftist American President Joe Biden, whom North Korean media had derided for years as a “rabid dog.”
In early 2021, following the inauguration, North Korean officials openly boasted of ignoring Biden.
“The U.S. has tried to contact us since mid-February through several routes including New York,” Choe Son Hui, then-first vice minister of Foreign Affairs, said at the time, adding the Kim regime did not “think there is a need to respond to the U.S.”
More recently, the North Korean regime has published multiple outraged statements in response to conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol convincing Biden to station a nuclear submarine in the southern port city of Busan. The USS Kentucky arrived this week; Yoon visited it on Tuesday, the same day King took his border tour, and threatened to “end” the North Korean communist regime in response to any “nuclear provocation.”
Kim Yo-Jong, dictator Kim Jong-un’s sister, published a statement last week in response to the planned submarine stationing, lamenting the alleged inevitability of nuclear war.
Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, attends a wreath-laying ceremony at Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, March 2, 2019 (JORGE SILVA/AFP via Getty Images).
“Due to the aggressive provocations of the U.S. far beyond its constant military readiness, the situation of the Korean peninsula is now heading toward the threshold of nuclear clash,” Kim Yo-jong’s statement read, “and the outbreak of a nuclear war is not hypothetical but is becoming a miserable reality that countries in the Northeast Asian region have to face in the near future.”