The mother of an American soldier who made the terrible decision two weeks ago to dash across the demilitarized zone separating South Korea and North Korea, had a message for her son’s captors.
On July 18, U.S. Army Pvt. Travis King crossed into the Hermit Kingdom that “Supreme leader” Kim Jong Un controls with an iron fist “willfully and without authorization,” according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and his mother spoke to ABC News and, in a message to North Korea, requested to hear her son’s voice.
“I was a very, very happy person. And now, I just worry,” Claudine Gates said. “Please, please send my valentine back home to me. I miss him so much. I just want to hear his voice.”
Keep in mind that when American college student Otto Warmbier was released after 17 months of imprisonment in North Korea in 2017, he came home in a vegetative state due to severe brain trauma and died shortly after returning to the United States.
King was reportedly in the process of being separated from the military following an alleged assault in Seoul, South Korea. He was supposed to take a flight back to the U.S. but skipped the flight and instead went on a joint security area orientation tour of the DMZ and, without authorization, crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, according to Fox News.
The soldier’s mother told ABC News that she received a phone call from King one night in which he screamed, “I’m not the Army soldier you want me to be,” and then hung up.
“When he first went to Korea, he was sending pictures home and he was just so happy. And then, as time went on, he just started fading away. I didn’t hear from him anymore,” Gates said.
The Pentagon confirmed this week that the United Nations has been in contact with North Korea about the detainment of King, Fox News reported.
Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said at a press conference on Tuesday he can “confirm that the DPRK has responded to United Nations Command (UNC).”
“What I will tell you is, as you heard us say previously, United Nations Command did communicate or provide some communication via well established communication channels,” Ryder said.
“But I don’t have any substantial progress to read out,” he added.
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Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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