North Korea has yet to respond to the mystery surrounding the United States Army Pvt. Travis T. King’s decision sent fugitives across the inter-Korean border on Tuesday, and it may not comment on the case for days or months.
Although North Korea has not yet acknowledged that it has a private King in its custody, given its past practices with other American detainees, much of its response will be determined by Mr. King’s intentions.
American soldiers who have previously gone to North Korea have been accepted as defectors who renounced capitalist ideology and have been allowed to live in the country by authorities in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. Americans charged with illegal entry are held in detention and sometimes released and deported, or tried and sentenced to hard labor.
In any case, North Korea has viewed such Americans as propaganda tools against the United States and in some cases tried to use them as bargaining chips in negotiations with Washington, which has no formal diplomatic ties with the North.
The Pentagon said Mr. King “deliberately and without permission” crossed the inter-Korean border into North Korea while on a group tour of the Joint Security Area, or Panmunjom, in the middle of the demilitarized zone that separates the North and South.
The United States and North Korea are still technically at war, and President Donald J. Relations between the two have soured since diplomacy between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un fell apart in 2019.
Mr. King, 23, was assigned to South Korea as a member of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. After his release earlier this month from a South Korean detention center where he spent time on assault charges, he was escorted by US military personnel to Incheon International Airport outside Seoul on Monday to board a flight to the United States, where he faces additional disciplinary action.
He never boarded the plane. Instead, he took a tour bus to Panmunjom the next day.
In the North, American detainees are subjected to extensive interrogations and are often forced to participate in government-sponsored news conferences where they apologize for “hostile acts” and make high-profile displays of remorse. Detainees who were later released said these apologies were often scripted by the North Korean government.
American soldiers who deserted or defected across the DMZ were sometimes featured in propaganda films and were even allowed to start families in the country.
“Until the 1970s, when American soldiers defected, North Korea held welcome rallies in Pyongyang, where officials gave them flowers and gifts as a home, while soldiers denounced ‘American imperialism,'” Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector living in Seoul, told The New York Times on Thursday.
But, Mr. Ahn, ordinary North Koreans usually had no contact with these American soldiers and saw them only in propaganda films where they acted as evil American military officers during the Korean War.
The American defectors are “very useful to North Korean filmmakers because no matter how hard they try to make the Korean actors look American, they don’t look American,” Mr. Ahn said. “As North Korea runs out of Americans to star in its movies, the private king could prove a valuable asset.”
The last time American troops left North Korea was in 1982. In the past, most of the United States soldiers who fled the country were white. However, Mr. King, who is black, said some North Korean defectors living in South Korea may influence how he is treated.
“North Korea is a deeply racist country,” said Ahn Myeong-cheol, a former North Korean soldier who lives in the South. “It’s hard to imagine how North Korea would use a black soldier in propaganda.”
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, a South Korean think tank, said Mr. Suggested to try using King.
North Korea, which has not completely let its guard down against the coronavirus, is extremely wary of foreigners entering its territory. In 2020, when a South Korean fisheries officer was found adrift in its waters, soldiers shot him dead and burned his body for fear of infection, the South alleged.
North Korea’s border remains closed and its continued pandemic restrictions make it unlikely that Pyongyang will invite a high-level American delegation to the country to retrieve Mr. King, as it has done with some previous American detainees, Mr. Cheong added.
“North Korea may expel them at some point,” he said. “From available information, it does not seem likely that the private king defected to the North because he fell in love with the North Korean system. More likely, he fled to the North to avoid punishment.
In South Korea, some expressed their disbelief at Mr. King’s decision to defect to the North, as well as possible security loopholes in the Joint Security Area.
“I know he was afraid to go to the States to face his punishment, but he could be stuck in North Korea,” said Lee Jae-hyung, a 35-year-old consultant in Seoul. “It’s a stupid move.”
Jin Yu Young Contributed reporting from Seoul.
