A tourist who saw a plainclothes American soldier sprint across the South Korean border into North Korea initially thought it was a stunt.
New Zealander Sarah Leslie and her father were part of a tour group that departed from Seoul Tuesday morning to visit the Military Demarcation Line separating the two countries. In an interview with The Associated Press, Leslie gave her eyewitness account of Pvt. Travis King leaving the other 43 tourists behind and running straight into North Korean territory, where he is currently detained.
Leslie said she had no idea at the time that King, who was dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, was a soldier, or that he was facing disciplinary action back home in the U.S.
A senior defense official told Fox News that King had just finished about two months in a South Korean detention facility following a physical altercation with locals. After King was arrested and throughout the time he was held at the facility, he made comments that he did not want to come back to America, according to the official.
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After his release on July 10, King was scheduled to travel home Monday to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he could have faced additional military discipline, including discharge from service, The Associated Press reported.
Instead, he "willfully and without authorization crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)," according to a U.S. Forces Korea spokesperson.
Leslie told The Associated Press her tour group went a step further than many by visiting the Joint Security Area in the village of Panmunjom, allowing tourists to effectively step on North Korean soil inside one of the buildings, which are jointly held. To get on such a tour, she said, required submitting their passports and getting permits in advance.
The tourists left Seoul by bus early Tuesday morning, and Leslie said she noticed that King was keeping to himself and didn't seem to talk with anyone else on the tour. At one point, she recounted, he purchased a DMZ hat from a gift shop.
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The tour was nearing its end Tuesday afternoon – the group had just walked out of the building and were milling about taking photos – when she saw King running "really fast."
"I assumed initially he had a mate filming him in some kind of really stupid prank or stunt, like a TikTok, the most stupid thing you could do," Leslie said. "But then I heard one of the soldiers shout, ‘Get that guy.’"
Leslie told The Associated Press it was an American soldier who gave the command to chase King, one of a group that patrols the area with South Korean troops.
But King was too fast for them. She said he charged about 30 feet down a narrow passageway between two blue buildings at the DMZ and disappeared before anyone could stop him.
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U.S. officials believe King is now in DPRK custody and are working with North Korean officials to resolve the matter.
Leslie said she didn't see any people on the North Korean side. The tour group had been told earlier the North Koreans there had been lying low since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After the incident, Leslie said soldiers gathered the tourists in a building and took them to an information center to give statements. She said many of the tourists, including her father, were unaware of what happened, but a soldier explained how King ran into North Korea.
"People couldn't really quite believe what had happened," Leslie said. "Quite a few were really shocked. Once we got on the bus and got out of there we were all kind of staring at each other."
Leslie, a lawyer from New Zealand's capital, Wellington, told The Associated Press she had an interest in the Koreas after studying politics at university and seeing South Korean movies.
She said she did not understand why King would flee to North Korea.
"I just didn’t think anyone would ever want to do that," she said.
Fox News' Greg Norman, Jennifer Griffin, Liz Friden and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
