Have you ever thought your life was so troubled at home that you wouldn't mind defecting to North Korea? Yes, to North Korea, one of the world's most oppressive and isolated regimes. In what has caused an international incident, an American soldier crossed into North Korea voluntarily and unauthorised.
He was 23, a US soldier, with a history of assault, about to be removed from the military. He didn't board a plane to the US as scheduled. Then he sprinted across the border to North Korea within seconds while on a tour of the area.
Did Travis King defect to North Korea?
We have often heard of brave and difficult tales of North Koreans defecting to the South or other countries. But there are only a handful of cases in history where someone from the outside world willfully defected to North Korea. Whether King's stunt is a defection or not, is yet to be determined, but it was done voluntarily.
Here are a few other people, including Americans, who "defected" to North Korea of their own will:
As recently as 2022, a person from South Korea sprinted across the border to the North. It isn't known whether the person was a South Korean defecting or a North Korean returning. It isn't known whether the person came to live or die.
One of the most high-profile South Korean defections to the North came in 1986 when the former South Korean Foreign Minister Choe Deok-sin defected with his wife.
In 2019, Choe Deok-sin's son Choe In-guk also defected to the North, saying that he was settling in the country as per the wishes of his father.
The first US soldier to defect to North Korea after the Korean War was Pvt Larry Allen Abshier in 1962. He was 19. He was also facing disciplinary trouble with the US Army.
There have been at least 5 or 6 defections by American soldiers to North Korea.
