We are learning more today about the Private 2nd Class named Travis King who bolted across the DMZ into North Korean hands earlier this week.
According to new reports, King had spend 48 days in a South Korean prison for failing to pay a fine for damage he caused last year to a police patrol car. He was being transferred back to the US for further disciplinary action when he decided to defect.
Here’s more from NBC News:
More details emerged Thursday about the last months in South Korea of a U.S. soldier who fled across the border to North Korea, as the isolated communist country remained silent on his status.
Pvt. 2nd Class Travis King, 23, spent 48 days in a prison in Cheonan, a city about 50 miles south of the South Korean capital, Seoul, after he failed to pay a $4,000 fine on charges that included damaging public property, a South Korean government official told NBC News by phone on Thursday.
According to legal documents, King did not cooperate when apprehended by officers last October after causing hundreds of dollars in damage to a police patrol car while shouting profanities about Koreans and the Korean army.
“Each day Mr. King spent at the penitentiary was equivalent to about 100,000 won,” or about $80, said the official, who was not authorized to speak to the news media.
King, who was released on July 10, had been escorted by the military to Incheon International Airport outside Seoul, the capital, on Tuesday for possible further disciplinary action in the United States.
An airport official told NBC News on Thursday that King went to his gate but was missing a travel document needed to board the plane and was escorted out by an American Airlines employee.
He ended up on a group tour of the Joint Security Area on the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea, where he bolted across to the North to the shock of the tourists around him.
According to King’s family, he’s grieving the loss of a young cousin and has never acted this way before:
King’s relatives told NBC News on Wednesday that he had been grieving the death of his young cousin and acting unlike himself.
“It’s out of his character,” his uncle Myron Gates said. “I’ve never seen him get down like that, ever.”
The North Koreans went silent Tuesday after they captured King:
The incident threatened to worsen tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, a repressive and insular nuclear-armed nation still technically at war with the South. America does not have an embassy in North Korea, complicating any potential negotiations over King’s return.
A senior administration official told NBC News on Tuesday that the U.S. immediately told North Korea that King had crossed the border willfully and was not acting on orders. North Korea confirmed receipt of the message but then went silent, the official said.
We’ll let you know more if we get it.