A US soldier who illegally crossed the border into North Korea on Tuesday was detained by North Korean authorities, according to US officials.
The service member has been to North Korea on a tour of Panmunjom, or general security arealocated on the inter-Korean border, becoming the latest US citizen to be detained by the isolated Communist country.
During the tour, the soldier broke away from the group and fled to North Korea, according to a US official familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak for the record. The guides gave chase but failed to catch him, the official said, and he was seen being held by North Korean soldiers.
Colonel Isaac Taylor, public affairs official for US Forces Korea, said the soldier “willfully and without permission crossed the Military Demarcation Line to enter the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” Tien. “We believe he is currently in North Korean custody and are working with our KPA partners to resolve this case.”
The United States and North Korea have no formal diplomatic relations, and the interests of the United States in this country are Officially represented by the Embassy of Sweden there.
The US-led United Nations Command first confirmed the border crossing on Tuesday.
Both the United Nations Command and the Korean People’s Army keep officers on duty at Panmunjom, the only point of communication on the 155-mile Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas.
The United Nations Command is allowing tour groups in the Joint Security Area, established as part of the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War 70 years ago next week. Tourists can visit the area from South Korea while unarmed soldiers follow closely behind.
The soldier arrested on Tuesday is the first known American to be detained in North Korea since Bruce Byron Lowrance was detained for a month after illegally entering the country from China in 2018. .
American student Otto F. Warmbier was arrested in Pyongyang in 2016, accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster on his hotel wall. Mr. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After being held for 17 months in North Korea, Warmbier, then 20 years old, was taken out of Pyongyang. to Ohio, his home state, in a coma in June 2017. He die a week later.
Although the inter-Korean border is littered with mines and protected by multiple layers of tall barbed wire fences, people from both Koreas have crossed the DMZ, as well as some American soldiers stationed in the South.
In 2014, an unidentified American was detained on a riverbank near South Korea’s western border with North Korea after attempting to swim into North Korea. After his arrest, he told South Korean officials that he intended to go to North Korea to meet leader Kim Jong-un. Before entering North Korea from China, Lowrance was also detained by South Korean soldiers near the inter-Korean border.
But defections through Panmunjom are very unusual.
A South Korean soldier assigned to the Joint Security Area defected to the North in 1991. In 2017, a North Korean soldier ran across Panmunjom through a Hail bullets from communist soldiers trying to stop him. The fugitive survived multiple bullet wounds.
Relations between North Korea and the United States have deteriorated in recent years as North Korea ramps up its nuclear and missile programs, despite international sanctions.
The fate of American citizens detained in North Korea is not always clear. Some were released voluntarily, while others faced criminal charges of “hostile conduct” and were released only when US officials, like Former President Bill Clintonwent to Pyongyang to demand their release.
North Korea release three American prisoners in 2018 after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang to pick them up. North Korea sees their release as a sign of goodwill and a benevolent diplomatic gesture aimed at creating favorable conditions for Trump. Kim’s summit with President Donald J. Trump in Singapore later that year.
Panmunjom has long been a popular tourist destination for foreign tourists in Korea. This is the only place inside the 2.5 mile wide DMZ where tourists are allowed. This is also the only place where foreigners can sometimes get a close look at North Korean soldiers.
On a typical tour, visitors are escorted into the Joint Security Area by South Korean and US soldiers wearing UN armbands. They looked at the Bridge of No Return, where the Korean prisoner of war exchange took place in 1953. They also visited the memorial to a South Korean soldier who was shot dead in a gunfight by a public officer. Soviet citizens defected to the West via Panmunjom in 1984.
At Panmunjom, there is no wall or fence separating the two Koreas. Only a low cement slab only half a foot high marks the official boundary. However, no visitors from both sides are allowed to cross the line, as President Trump did when he met Mr. Kim in 2019. The highlight of the tour is that visitors are escorted into the blue joint conference room. lam and allowed to step inside. Half North Korea.
North Korean soldiers attentively observed the visitors from the South, sometimes staring into the common room. But since the pandemic, they have avoided coming near tourists outside.
Choe Sang-hun report from Seoul, John Ismay And Michael D. Cut from Washington. Edward King Contribution report from Washington.
