Just one day before crossing into North Korea, Private Travis King texted his US military handlers to let them know he had arrived at his gate at Incheon Airport in Seoul and was preparing to board a plane back to the US.
King, a junior enlisted soldier assigned to US Forces Korea, had faced assault charges in South Korea and was due to be removed from the US military upon his return to Fort Bliss, Texas.
But while he cleared customs, he did not get on the plane as scheduled on Monday, US officials told CNN. His escorts could not accompany him all the way to the gate to verify that he had boarded. Instead, he had booked a tour for Tuesday with a private company of the Joint Security Area inside the demilitarized zone, which divides North and South Korea.
King had checked in to an American Airlines flight bound to Dallas but reported a missing passport and didn’t board.
“He passed through all the security points up to the boarding gate but he told the airline staff that his passport was missing,” an official at the Incheon airport told CNN. The airline staff then escorted him back outside to the departure side, the official said.
On Monday, the American Airlines flight left Incheon at 6:36 p.m., according to the airline.
“He came back to the departure side of the airport at 7:02 p.m.,” the official said. American Airlines declined to comment on the incident to CNN.
When passengers have emergency situations where they cannot board a plane after passing through the immigration process, they must reverse the procedure under the immigration office’s approval.
While on a tour inside the demilitarized zone the next day, King inexplicably made a run for it across the demarcation line into North Korea, an eyewitness on the same tour and US officials familiar with the case told CNN. Unlike most of the heavily fortified zone, which is 160 miles long and 2.5 miles wide, the actual border line between North and South Korea inside the JSA does not have a physical barrier.
King at first tried to enter Panmungak Hall, which is a North Korean facility in the Joint Security Area, one of the US officials said. But the front door was locked – so he ran to the back of the building, at which point he was hurried into a van and driven away by North Korean guards, the official said.
“Get him!” a soldier on the South Korean side yelled, according to the eyewitness, Sarah Leslie. But it was too late.
“He was going so fast, and we were so close to the border, that he was gone by then,” Leslie added.
It wasn’t until later on Tuesday, when King failed to showed up at Fort Bliss, that the US military first realized he was missing. South Korean immigration officials also confirmed to the US that King never boarded the plane, the US official told CNN.
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Officials across the US government are now trying to piece together what might have motivated King, a US national, to willfully and without prior authorization cross into one of the most hostile countries on earth.
On Wednesday, the White House said it was still working to determine exactly where King is, and what his condition is.
“We are still gathering all the facts, it is still very early on,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “The administration has and will continue to actively work to ensure his safety and the return of Private King to us and to his family,” she said.
She said the administration was working with the government of South Korea, along with Sweden, on the matter. Sweden generally represents US interests in North Korea because the US and North Korea have no diplomatic ties.
The US military has tried reaching out directly to the North Korean government to resolve the issue, officials said, but they have not yet received any response. The US believes he is still in North Korean custody but they do not have any details on his well-being or whether he is alive.
King “made a run across the demilitarized zone in the Joint Security Area, was picked up by the North Koreans, and we’ve had no contact at this point,” Adm. John Aquilino, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, said at the Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday. “But we’re still doing our investigation to find out exactly what happened.”
Source: CNN
