US Tourist Detained By North Korea After Crossing The Border From South Korea

A US national has crossed the inter-Korean border into North Korea without authorisation while on tour and is likely to be in the North's custody, the United Nations Command that oversees the demilitarised zone area at the border said on Tuesday.

The person was taking part in a tour to the Joint Security Area on the demilitarised zone border separating the two Koreas since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, where soldiers from both sides stand guard.?The Korean border line is marked by 1,292 identical signs at staggered intervals across the peninsula.

REUTERS/File Photo

South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo daily, citing South Korea's army, identified the person as Travis King, a US army soldier with the rank of private second class.

UN Command's tweet??

"A US National on a JSA orientation tour crossed, without authorisation, the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)," the UN Command said in a tweet.

"We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and we are working with our KPA counterparts to resolve this incident," it added, referring to North Korea's People's Army.

"We're still doing some research into this and everything that happened," Colonel Isaac Taylor, spokesperson for the US military in South Korea (USFK) and the UN Command, told Reuters.

Crossing comes at a sensitive time

The crossing comes at a sensitive time amid high tensions on the Korean peninsula, with the arrival of a US nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine in South Korea for a rare visit in a warning to North Korea over its own military activities.

North Korea has been testing increasingly powerful missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, including a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched last week.

As per a Guardian report, more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea to avoid political oppression and economic difficulties since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.However, cases of Americans or South Koreans defecting to North Korea are rare.