The mother of U.S. Army Private. Travis King, the American soldier who remains detained in North Korea after crossing into the country during a tour of the DMZ , has pled for his safe return.
North Korea is remaining silent about the status of King, whom an Army spokesperson said had joined the armed services in January 2021 and is currently a cavalry scout with the 4th Infantry Division.
Claudine Gates, who was identified by ABC News as the 23-year-old’s mom, told the network on Wednesday July 19, that she last heard from him “a few days ago” when he said he was returning to Fort Bliss in Texas and now just wants “him to come home.”
“I can’t see Travis doing anything like that,” Claudine Gates, of Racine, Wisconsin, told ABC news.
I’m so proud of him. I just want him to come home, come back to America,” his worried mother added..
A New Zealand woman who says she was on the same tour as King on Tuesday told 1News, “Suddenly, I noticed a guy running, dressed in black, what looked like full gas toward the North Korean side.”
Sarah Leslie said the incident happened while the tour group was milling around in the Korean border village of Panmunjom under the watch of soldiers and initially thought King – who was dressed in civilian clothing – was performing for a TikTok video.
But then “he just kept going and didn’t stop,” Leslie said.
The New Zealand network says soldiers then chased after King while the tour group was escorted into a building.
“Everyone was kind of flipping their lid, and once we got in the building, it was kind of like, ‘Oh my God’,” Leslie told 1News.
A U.S. Forces Korea spokesperson said King was on a joint security area orientation tour when he “willfully and without authorization crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).”
“We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and are working with our KPA (Korean People’s Army) counterparts to resolve this incident,” the spokesperson added.
The incident happened after King had just finished about two months in a South Korean detention facility following a physical altercation with locals, a senior defense official said on Tuesday. Throughout the time he was held at the facility he made comments that he did not want to come back to America.
King eventually was released on July 10 and was being sent home Monday to Fort Bliss where he would have faced additional military discipline and discharge from the service, The Associated Press reports.
In February, a court fined him $3,950 after being convicted of assaulting an unidentified person and damaging a police vehicle in Seoul last October, according to a transcript of the verdict obtained by The Associated Press.
The ruling said King had also been accused of punching a 23-year-old man at a Seoul nightclub, though the court dismissed that charge because the victim didn’t want King to be punished.
