The US-led United Nations Command has initiated talks with North Korea about the American soldier who ran into that country and crossed one of the most militarized borders in the world, according to an official.
But a British lieutenant general who helps lead the UN command stopped short of saying exactly when talks about Travis King began, whether they have been constructive or how many exchanges there have been. The lieutenant general, Andrew Harrison, also would not address any known details about King’s health condition.
“None of us know where this is going to end – I am, in life, an optimist, and I remain optimistic,” Harrison told reporters at a news conference in the South Korean capital, Seoul. “But … I will leave it at that.”
Harrison added that the communications between the UN Command and North Korea about King kicked off through mechanisms which were set up under a 1953 armistice that halted fighting during the Korean war.
He did not elaborate, but the Associated Press reported that Harrison may have been referring to a telephone line between the UN Command – which was created to fight that war – and the North Korean People’s Army at Panmunjom, the border truce village where King crossed on 18 July.
Harrison’s comments about the beginning of a dialogue centering on King’s fate came about four days after the US said North Korea had been unresponsive to its attempts to start talks.
King was supposed to be heading to Fort Bliss, Texas, after finishing a prison sentence in South Korea for assault. Potentially facing discipline from the army as well as discharge from the service, he took a civilian tour of Panmunjom on Tuesday and ran into North Korea.
He was reportedly laughing as he bolted across the border separating the Koreas, which technically remain at war because no treaty was ever signed.
King, 23, is the first known American to be held in North Korea in nearly five years.
The US fought alongside the South during the Korean war and has never set up a diplomatic relationship with the North. The two countries sometimes talk through the armistice telephone line, but North Korea could be reluctant to release King quickly to the US given the political history lurking over the situation, according to experts in some quarters.
The last three known American detainees in North Korea were released in 2018. Back then, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, engaged in nuclear diplomacy with the Donald Trump White House.
But just a year earlier, the American student Otto Warmbier died within days of his being released in a coma after 17 months in captivity.
Warmbier and other American detainees in North Korea were imprisoned over various accusations, including of subversion, anti-state activities and spying.
King had served in South Korea as a cavalry scout with the US army’s 1st Armored Division. A court in Seoul sentenced him to prison and fined him 5m won (about $3,900) for assault on an unidentified person as well as damaging a police vehicle.
His relatives have said he may have been overwhelmed by his legal issues and potential discharge from the army when – like many tourists do – he programmed a tour of Panmunjom, an area without civilian residents that is jointly overseen by the UN Command and North Korea.
King’s detention in North Korea came at a particularly fraught time in that region politically speaking. North Korea on Monday fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, the latest in a recent streaks of weapons testing which is apparently meant to protest against naval assets which the US sent to South Korea.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
