Detained American soldiers often used as 'bargaining chips' by North Korea: journalist

The Current19:09The fate of a U.S. soldier who ran into North Korea

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It's been a week since American soldier Travis King fled north across the Korean border, but it's still unclear where he might be — or how he's doing.

"Often the first word that we get about Americans in North Korean custody is through their state media, and sometimes that can take weeks," said journalist Jean Lee, who opened the first and only U.S. news bureau in North Korea.

"So far, we have not heard a peep from the North Koreans through their state media about Travis King," she told The Current guest host Kathleen Goldhar.

Before fleeing to North Korea, King served a two-month sentence in a South Korean prison on assault charges, according to The Associated Press. He was scheduled to return to Texas on July 17, and was escorted as far as customs, but never got on the plane. 

He later joined a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom, before he bolted across the heavily-guarded demilitarized zone. 

On Monday, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said it had not had any substantive communication with North Korea since King crossed the border last week.

Lee, who hosts the BBC podcast The Lazarus Heist, spoke to Goldhar about the U.S. government's attempts to reach King and the country's relationship with North Korea. Here's part of their conversation.

What do you know, if anything, about King and his whereabouts?

We don't know anything about exactly where he is — apart from the fact that he is likely in North Korean custody — or how he's doing. 

A big part of that is because he's an American. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea. 

So it's not particularly unusual that we have no information yet?

It's not surprising. 

I mean, they have this U.S. soldier who's come into their country. They're most likely interrogating and trying to figure out what to do with him. 

Absolutely terrifying and nerve-wracking for his family and certainly an issue for U.S. authorities. But also, I should mention, this is a very busy time in North Korea as well. They're gearing up for big events coming later this week.

I think it's very disturbing that there is this American who's gone into North Korea and that there's no word about his well-being or his whereabouts.

The U.S. has tried to reach out. How are they doing that?

They don't have diplomatic relations, but they do have channels of communication, and one of them is the UN Command. That's a U.S.-led force that is there at the [demilitarized zone] to monitor the armistice that was signed in 1953.  

According to The Associated Press, the deputy commander of the U.S.-led UN Command … has said that they have been in contact. We don't have any further details. We have no idea exactly what they haven't revealed, what the North Koreans have said. 

There's also a channel of communications through the North Korean mission to the United Nations. The North Koreans do have a mission in New York, and it's quite possible that they've been trying to communicate to get some more information through that channel.

Relations between the U.S. and North Korea have always been contentious. What are they like at the moment?

This is a good time to remember that technically North Korea sees the United States as its enemy. They're still locked in a state of war because that Korean War, it was never resolved with a peace treaty. 

It's interesting because we call it the forgotten war here in the United States, but the North Koreans have not forgotten it, and it is core to their ideology. 

We should also remember that North Korea, after the breakdown of nuclear negotiations between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump in 2019, North Korea has gone into … a self-imposed isolation.

[They] sealed the borders at the start of the pandemic and for more than three years has really kept itself apart from the world, except from China, and has been testing and building its nuclear arsenal in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. 

That has certainly raised tensions in the region and is not going to make getting this American soldier out of North Korea easy.

So back to King. He crossed over at the DMZ or the demilitarized zone. Can you describe that for me and others who don't have a sense of what it looks like?

Now, to explain what this DMZ is, it stretches all the way across from east to west at the 38th parallel, so bisecting the Korean Peninsula. It's about 250 kilometres across and about four kilometres deep.

It's a buffer zone. It was not meant to be permanent, but because that armistice was never turned into a peace treaty, it remains there, monitored by the UN Command — and the North Koreans and the South Koreans do have troops stationed along that DMZ. 

Now, it's heavily ringed by barbed wire, strewn with landmines. But there is a pocket called the ... joint security area, which we also know it as Panmunjom, which is the name of the village that was originally there that is now not armed ... as part of a military agreement between North and South in 2018.

That is the one area where if you go on a tour, North Korea is right there and … you could just step over it and be in North Korea. 

He's not the first U.S. soldier to make his way to North Korea. It's rare, but it's happened. So how did North Korea use the previous soldiers that made their way to their country?

Charles Jenkins, in 1965, he was an U.S. Army sergeant — disgruntled, drunk, [he] went into North Korea and ended up there for decades. 

There's another named James Joseph Dresnok, also an American soldier who went to North Korea. He ended up in North Korea for decades as well. 

I have movies, dramas on my shelf here in my home in D.C. that show Charles Jenkins in North Korean dramas playing the evil American. So he was used in their propaganda. 

He eventually got out of North Korea because he married a Japanese woman who had been abducted by the North Koreans. And Japan's prime minister managed to get her and other Japanese who'd been abducted back to Japan, and he joined his wife and ended up passing away in Japan. 

We have had more recent cases. There was a case in the early 80s of an American soldier who defected to North Korea. Unfortunately, he passed away.

So often, we do see them used in North Korean propaganda and North Korea using them as bargaining chips and leverage as well in negotiations with the United States.

With files from The Associated Press and Reuters. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Produced by Niza Lyapa Nondo.