US soldier who fled to North Korea captured in final DMZ tour image – live

A tourist from New Zealand who was visiting the DMZ between North and South Korea thought it was a stunt when she saw a supposed member of her tour group sprint towards the north.

It quickly became clear that the incident was no prank, but instead a daring escape by a US soldier who had fled a Seoul airport and somehow joined the tour group as he was facing possible disciplinary measures at home.

Sarah Leslie told the AP that Travis King, 23, was out of uniform, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and she had no clue that he was a soldier, or in legal jeopardy.

Mr King, 23, had spent close to two months in a South Korean prison for assault before he was released on 10 July and was set to head back to Fort Bliss in Texas on Monday where he may have been discharged and possibly be the subject of further military discipline.

Ms Leslie told the news agency that her group went further than other tours as they visited the Joint Security Area in the village of Panmunjom, meaning that the tourists were essentially stepping onto North Korean soil in one of the buildings which is controlled jointly by the two nations.

Travis King was detained on 8 October following an altercation. When police tried to question him, he behaved aggressively and didn’t reply to their queries. After he was placed in a patrol car, he shouted insults and expletives as he kicked the car door, with the ruling saying that he caused around 584,000 won in damage.

The court said that the defendant admitted to the allegations, that he didn’t have a criminal record, and that he paid 1 million won to repair the car.

Before fleeing the airport to join the tour group, Mr King had passed through security on his own.

The Korea Times reported that an airport official said that Mr King had said that his passport was missing as an excuse to not get on the flight.

One official told Reuters that DMZ tours are advertised at the airport and Mr King seemed to have joined one but it’s unclear how he managed to do so as they usually take three days to schedule because of security measures.

Mr King was reported to the police in South Korea after reportedly punching a Korean national at a Seoul nightclub on 25 September 2022. He wasn’t indicted as the victim chose not to press charges.

In February of this year, he was fined almost $4,000 and charged with several violations, including damaging public property, court documents state.

He was accused of kicking a Seoul police vehicle last year, leading to hundreds of dollars in damage. As he was detained by officers, he shouted profanities about Koreans and the country’s military.

The ruling from a South Korean court states that Mr King pled guilty to assault and destruction of public goods in connection to the incident which occurred in October last year, according to Reuters.

An administration official told NBC News that instead of heading to his gate, Mr King joined a civilian tour group going to the joint security area and the village of Panmunjom about 90 minutes from the airport.

It’s the only part of the DMZ stretching on for more than 155 miles where North and South Korea interact with each other.

New Zealand tourist Sarah Lelie was in the tour group that Mr King joined. She said that the tour group was “sort of milling around” at the end of the tour watched by both US and South Korean troops as North Korean soldiers seemed to be in a building.

It was at that point that she saw a man “running what looked like full gas towards the North Korean side,” she told the AP.

The South Korean and US troops ordered the rest of the group to go inside and set off after Mr King, but they were unable to catch him.

“Everybody was stunned and shocked,” Ms Leslie said. “There were some people who hadn’t even realized what was going on.”

The US soldier who joined a civilian tour only to run across the DMZ into North Korea previously shouted profanities about Koreans and their military.

More information about Private 2nd Class Travis King, 23, is emerging after his escape into one of the most isolated countries in the world.

Mr King is in the custody of the North Koreans after running across the border and “willfully and without authorization” Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday.

The young soldier had recently been released from a South Korean jail and he had been taken by the military to the Incheon International Airport outside the capital of Seoul. He was set to possibly face further disciplinary action back in the US.

An administration official told NBC News that instead of heading to his gate, Mr King joined a civilian tour group going to the joint security area and the village of Panmunjom about 90 minutes from the airport.

While some South Korean conservatives have expressed disappointment that the Biden-Yoon meeting in April came short of agreeing to station U.S. nuclear weapons or strategic assets in the South, placing nuclear weapons offshore and on submarines is “actually a stronger deterrent in many ways,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at Washington’s Center for a New American Security.

“Deterrence is strengthened when the location of American strategic assets is unknown to the adversary as long as the adversary knows that these weapons exist,” said Kim.

Still, Seoul and Washington will need to find the “sweet spot” when it comes to the visibility of America’s extended deterrent.

“Too much visibility of strategic assets could actually undermine the deterrent effect while too little could raise questions in Seoul about commitment,” Kim said.

Periodic visits by U.S. nuclear ballistic missile-capable submarines to South Korea were one of several agreements reached by U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in April in response to North Korea’s expanding nuclear threat. They also agreed to further expand combined military exercises, strengthen joint planning for nuclear contingencies and establish a bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group, which held its inaugural meeting in Seoul Tuesday.

The steps were meant to ease South Korean concerns about North Korea’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and suppress voices within the South calling for the country to pursue its own nuclear weapons program.

U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement that the Kentucky’s arrival in Busan reflects the United States’ “ironclad” commitment to “extended deterrence,” referring to an assurance to defend its ally with its full military capabilities, including nuclear ones.

The Ohio-class submarine can be equipped with about 20 Trident II ballistic missiles with a range of 12,000 kilometers (7,456 miles), said Moon Keun-sik, a submarine expert who teaches at Kyonggi University in South Korea.

“From this submarine, the U.S. can launch attacks (on North Korea) from anywhere in the world … But there will surely likely be backlashes from North Korea and China because it’s like the world’s most covert and threatening nuclear weapons forces being deployed on their doorsteps,” he said.

Wednesday’s launches marked the North’s first ballistic activity since July 12, when it flight-tested a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile that demonstrated potential range to reach deep into the U.S. mainland. That launch was supervised by the country’s authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un, who vowed to further bolster his country’s nuclear fighting capabilities in the face of expanding U.S.-South Korean military activities, which he blamed for worsening the security environment on the Korean Peninsula.

Tensions have risen in the region in recent months as the pace of both North Korean weapons tests and U.S.-South Korean joint military drills have increased in a cycle of tit-for-tat.

Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles while attempting to demonstrate a dual ability to conduct nuclear attacks on both South Korea and the continental United States. The allies in response have stepped up their joint military training and agreed to increase the deployments of U.S. strategic assets like long-range bombers, aircraft carriers and submarines to the region.

The flight distance of the North Korean missiles roughly matched the distance between Pyongyang and the South Korean port city of Busan, where the USS Kentucky arrived Tuesday afternoon in the first visit by a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea since the 1980s.

Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters that the North Korean missiles traveled on a low trajectory, with their maximum altitude reaching about 50 kilometers (31 miles), and possibly demonstrated “irregular maneuver” in flight.

Japan has previously used similar language to describe the flight characteristics of a North Korean weapon modeled after Russia’s Iskander missile, which travels at low altitudes and is designed to be maneuverable in flight to improve its chances of evading missile defenses.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff condemned the North Korean launches as “major provocation” that threatens peace and stability in the region and said the South Korean and U.S. militaries were closely monitoring the North for further weapons activities.