Evidently having determined that wayward US Army soldier Travis King isn’t really communist material, North Korean officials have decided to kick him out two months after he sort of defected to the impoverished totalitarian state, CNN reports citing Pyongyang’s state media outlet.
“The relevant organ of the DPRK decided to expel Travis King, a soldier of the US Army who illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK, under the law of the Republic,” KCNA said, adding that King had “confessed that he illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army and was disillusioned about the unequal US society.” CNN’s report then stated the obvious by saying they could not independently verify if those were King’s actual words on why he had attempted to defect.
What isn’t in question is that King was due to be discharged from the US Army after being arrested for a bar fight while stationed in South Korea. He had been sent to the airport to board a flight back home to face processing but slipped away from his handler, ending up on a tour group of the DMZ a few days later. It was then that he abruptly bolted past a checkpoint into Kim Jong-Un’s kingdom to surrender – and the promptly tossed into a van by soldiers waiting on the other side.