United States Army Private Travis King, who fled to North Korea in July, has been detained and charged with desertion, possession of child pornography, and other crimes, according to a charging document.
King, 23, was released from North Korean detention and returned to the U.S. late last month. He has also been charged with assaulting fellow soldiers, unlawfully possessing alcohol, and disobeying a superior officer. He faces eight counts in total.
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Claudine Gates, King’s mother, 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.”
“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,” she added, per CNN.
In July, King was released from a South Korean prison, where he had been held on assault charges. He was supposed to fly home to the U.S., where he was likely to have faced additional discipline and discharge, but instead, he bolted across the South Korean border, across the demilitarized zone, and into North Korea.
Pyongyang later said that King “confessed that he decided to come over to the DPRK, opposed to inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination in the US army” and that he “was disillusioned at the unequal American society.”
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King’s decision to flee to a U.S. adversary confused Washington diplomats and even his own family. “…he’s not the type to just disappear,” Jaqueda Gates, King’s sister, told CNN in August when he was still in North Korea.
King is being held in pretrial detention at Fort Bliss, Texas. The desertion charge alone could land him in prison for three years, according to the Associated Press.
