US soldier pictured after crossing North Korea border

The mother of a US soldier who allegedly laughed as he crossing the border to North Korea has broken her silence.

The mother of the US soldier who has been detained in North Korea after laughing while crossing into the country without authorisation said the risky behaviour was unlike her son.

Travis King, 23, was stationed in South Korea and had reportedly snuck onto a tour of the demilitarised zone between the two countries on Tuesday when he strayed from the group and ran across the border.

“I can’t see Travis doing anything like that,” Claudine Gates told ABC News.

US soldier Travis King. Picture: Supplied

She said she last spoke to her son a few days ago and just wanted him to come home.

King was facing military disciplinary charges while stationed in South Korea after having served time at a prison in the country over assault charges.

He was supposed to fly back to the US and was escorted by military personnel to the airport but he left past the security checkpoint and skipped his flight.

Instead, he joined the tour of the Joint Security Area in the demilitarised zone.

Another tourist on the tour, Mikaela Johansson of Sweden, claimed King loudly laughed as he ran between two buildings into the Hermit Kingdom.

A US soldier who had served in South Korea crossed the military demarcation line separating the two Koreas into North Korea without authorisation. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

US officials said King, a private second class who has served in the Army for approximately two years, “deliberately” crossed the border into the closed-off and secretive country.

“I’m so proud of him. I just want him to come home, come back to America,” his worried mother told ABC News.

The White House said it is working with the Department of Defence, the State Department and the United Nations to resolve the situation.

King is understood to be in North Korean custody after crossing the border at the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the Demilitarised Zone.

The US-led United Nations Command has said it is working with Pyongyang’s military to “resolve this incident,” but the North has a long history of detaining Americans and using them as bargaining chips in testy bilateral ties.

King served around two months in a South Korean jail on assault charges before crossing the heavily fortified border without authorisation, according to officials.

King crossed the border “wilfully and without authorisation,” US Forces Korea spokesman Colonel Isaac Taylor has since said.

A United States national entered North Korea during a tour of the heavily-fortified border and is believed to have been detained, the United Nations Command said. (Photo by Anthony WALLACE / AFP)

The United Nations Command said he had been on a Joint Security Area (JSA) orientation tour, adding that it was working with Pyongyang’s military to “resolve this incident”.

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin told journalists that Washington was “closely monitoring and investigating the situation”.

North and South Korea remain technically at war as the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, with a demilitarised zone running along the border.

Soldiers from both sides face off at the JSA north of Seoul, which the United Nations Command oversees.

US President Donald Trump stepped into the northern side of the Military Demarcation Line that divides North and South Korea in 2019 to meet North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised zone. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

It is also a popular tourist site, and hundreds of visitors daily tour the South Korean side.

Former US president Donald Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the Panmunjom Truce Village in 2019 and even stood on North Korean soil after stepping across the demarcation line there.

An eyewitness who said they were on the same JSA tour told CBS News the group had visited one of the buildings at the site when “this man gives out a loud “ha ha ha” and just runs in between some buildings”.

“I thought it was a bad joke at first but, when he didn’t come back, I realised it wasn’t a joke and then everybody reacted and things got crazy,” they said.

Hours later, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, according to the South Korean military – an apparent response to the arrival of an American nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea on Tuesday, the first such visit since 1981.

North Korea fired at least one ballistic missile into the sea hours after an American nuclear-armed submarine made its first South Korean port call in decades. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP)

The ballistic missile launches were likely unrelated to the American soldier crossing the border, “but such an incident doesn’t help matters,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“The Kim regime is likely to treat a border crosser as a military, intelligence, and public health threat even though it is more likely that such an individual is mentally distressed and acting impulsively due to personal issues.”

North Korea sealed its borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and has yet to reopen them.

Its security presence on its side of the border at the JSA has also significantly scaled back.

The incident comes as relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points, with diplomacy stalled and Kim calling for increased weapons development, including tactical nuclear warheads.

Seoul and Washington have ramped up defence cooperation in response, staging joint military exercises with advanced stealth jets and US strategic assets.

– With the New York Post and AFP