U.S. Army Private Travis King has been detained and charged with a series of crimes, including desertion for absconding to North Korea over the summer, assaulting fellow soldiers, and soliciting child pornography.
The allegations against 23-year-old King were detailed in a charging document provided to the Associated Press by an anonymous official, who also confirmed the soldier’s confinement. He was taken into custody on Wednesday at Ft. Bliss, Texas, where he remained in pre-trial detention Friday, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
King — a cavalry scout in the Army since January 2021 — is facing additional counts of unlawfully possessing alcohol, making a false statement, and disobeying superior officers, among others.
On July 18, King, who’d been stationed in South Korea, sprinted across the heavily fortified border dividing it from the communist nation to the north. He was immediately captured by soldiers on the other side and remained in North Korea’s custody for more than two months. Just days earlier, the soldier had been freed from a South Korean detention facility, where he spent 47 days on assault charges stemming from an altercation with locals.
Upon his release, King was scheduled to fly from Seoul back to Fort Bliss, where he was expected to face further military disciplinary actions, including discharge from the service. Instead, he managed to escape his escorts at airport security and made his way to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Dressed in civilian clothes, he joined a tour of the border village of Panmunjom, a popular tourist spot inside the 154-mile DMZ.
That’s when King “willfully and without authorization crossed the military demarcation line,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the time.
Weeks later, Pyongyang abruptly announced it would expel King. He touched back down on American soil in September.
Desertion can result in imprisonment for as many as three years. King is also facing charges for soliciting and possessing child pornography. The Army has alleged he connected with a Snapchat user in July 2023, not long before his dash into North Korea, to “knowingly and willingly produce child pornography,” Reuters reported.
King’s mother, Claudine Gates, said in a statement that she loved her son “unconditionally” and was “extremely concerned about his mental health.”
“As his mother, I ask that my son be afforded the presumption of innocence,” she said. “A mother knows her son, and I believe something happened to mine while he was deployed. The Army promised to investigate what happened at Camp Humphries, and I await the results.”
With News Wire Services
