SEOUL — History isn't precisely reassuring for Travis King, the American GI who bolted throughout the closely guarded border into North Korea Tuesday.

The Pentagon was nonetheless scrambling to find out what led the U.S. non-public to defect and the regime of North Korean chief Kim Jong Un has mentioned nothing in regards to the incident. But some clues to Pvt. King’s future could also be gleaned from the experiences of a number of U.S. deserters who defected to the remoted hardline state between the Sixties and Nineteen Eighties.

Pvt. King is in his early 20s and South Korean reviews state that he had lately been held in detention after assaulting a South Korean nationwide and damaging a police automotive.

Set to return to Fort Bliss, Texas, to face disciplinary proceedings, he by no means boarded his flight. Going AWOL on the airport, he resurfaced in civilian garb, joined a civilian vacationer group on the famed Panmunjom border village and dashed into the village’s northern sector earlier than American and South Korean guards may cease him.

Retired U.S. officers advised the Times of their shock {that a} soldier deliberate and took such a life-changing motion to keep away from a punishment unlikely to be sterner than dishonorable discharge. What could also be much more unpredictable is the destiny that awaits him in Mr. Kim’s arms.Pvt. King’s case is uncommon — however not distinctive. Their tales are little-known footnotes of Cold War historical past, however six American GIs present attainable roadmaps for his future — although a COVID-19-era improvement might be a benchmark for a bloodier consequence.

Going north

Between 1962 and 1982, 5 U.S. troopers primarily based in South Korea defected throughout the DMZ into North Korea. And in 1979, a Korean-American GI disappeared from his West German publish, reappearing months later in North Korea. (By distinction, some 30,000 North Koreans are estimated to have made the perilous journey south, in search of to flee the poverty and repression of the Kim household regime.)

All have been enlisted males, the very best rating of them a sergeant. Motives for the uncommon choice to defect to the North included imminent disciplinary proceedings, household points again dwelling, worry of deployment to Vietnam and easy drunken impulse.

In North Korea, they studied state propaganda and taught English. The 5 white defectors — Pvt. King is Black — even performed overseas villains in home TV and movie productions, incomes some native fame.

They have been granted North Korean citizenship, houses and feminine companionship. Some met and married wives from among the many tiny group of feminine foreigners within the nation.

Fenced off from the world, info regularly leaked out that, one after the other, they'd died of pure causes. However, two — who clashed personally and violently throughout their lengthy sojourn in North Korea — gained shock visibility of their silver years.

In 2004, Charles Jenkins, a former sergeant from North Carolina, turned the one one U.S. navy defector to depart North Korea. His departure was a byproduct of warming ties — which might later cool — between Pyongyang and Tokyo.

His passport in a foreign country was the spouse he married within the Communist state, Hitomi Soga. In 1978, Ms. Soga had been kidnapped by North Korean brokers, who had the weird mission of capturing Japanese residents to show language and tradition on the North’s spy academies.

In Japan after his launch, Sgt. Jenkins was court-martialed, dishonorably discharged and served a quick sentence — throughout which he claimed he was intensely debriefed by U.S. intelligence officers. Then he settled together with his spouse on Sado, the quiet island the place she had grown up.

In retirement, he turned a minor vacationer attraction on Sado, wrote an autobiography and spoke to each TV and print journalists.

He made clear that his defection — an impulse fueled by alcohol, in opposition to a background of worry of deployment to Vietnam — had been an error. His life in North Korea, the place he was underneath near-constant surveillance, had been laborious and horrifying.

He and colleagues had sought to defect by way of the Soviet Embassy, however had been captured and overwhelmed. Health care was fundamental: His US Army tattoo was reduce out of his arm with out anaesthetic, and he misplaced a testicle in a most cancers process.

He was capable of go to his aged mom within the U.S. earlier than dying in Japan in 2017 on the age of 77.

Pvt. James “Joe” Dresnok, an enormous, tough-looking Virginian who defected in 1965 in opposition to the background of a marital breakup and imminent disciplinary proceedings, was the diametric reverse of the regretful and frail Jenkins, who accused him of bullying.

Mr. Dresnok spoke at size in a British documentary shot in North Korea, “Crossing the Line” (2007), that was narrated by actor Christian Slater.

In the movie, he mentioned his marriages to overseas ladies who have been dwelling in North Korea underneath what he admitted have been mysterious circumstances. In entrance of the digicam, he supplied effusive gratitude to Mr. Kim for retaining him fed and alive throughout the deadly famines of the Nineteen Nineties.

A eager drinker, smoker and fisherman, he mentioned he may by no means be lured again to the West.

The ex-soldier continued dwelling in Pyongyang - in vital consolation by North Korean requirements - till his dying in 2016 on the age of 75. He by no means left the nation and is survived by two mixed-race sons, each loyal North Koreans.

‘They need to be taken out of the gene pool’

Steve Tharp, a U.S. military lieutenant colonel who retired in South Korea after intensive experiences on the DMZ, had no sympathy for defectors.

“I grew up believing in Darwinism,” he growled. “When a person makes a decision like that, they need to be taken out of the gene pool.”

He urged three attainable outcomes.

One could be for Pyongyang to simply accept Pvt. King and deal with him like prior U.S. Army deserters for propaganda functions. Another could be to label him “crazy” — undercutting any propaganda worth — and permit U.S. negotiators to take him dwelling. Another could be starker.

“They could just kill him, because of COVID,” Mr. Tharp mentioned.

In 2020, amid the pandemic, a South Korean apparently sought to defect northward by leaping into the Yellow Sea. He was shot lifeless within the water from a North Korean patrol boat and his physique was burned — an obvious enforcement of the North’s brutal quarantine insurance policies that appalled the world.

Content Source: www.washingtontimes.com