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North Korea Detains U.S. Citizen After Unauthorized Border Crossing
The man is the first known American to be held in North Korean custody since？ Bruce Byron Lowrance？ was detained for a month after illegally entering the country from China in 2018.？
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Unauthorized crossings through Panmunjom, on the border between North and South Korea, are highly unusual. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
By Choe Sang-Hun
Reporting from Seoul
July 18, 2023Updated 8:58 a.m. ET
An American citizen who crossed into North Korea without authorization on Tuesday has been taken into custody by North Korean authorities, the American-led United Nations Command said.
The American national crossed into North Korea during a tour of Panmunjom, or the Joint Security Area, which straddles the inter-Korean border, becoming the latest United States citizen to be detained by the isolated Communist country.
The U.N. Command said in a statement that it was working with the North Korean military “to resolve this incident” but gave no further information.
Both the U.N. Command and the North Korean People’s Army keep duty officers at Panmunjom, the sole point of contact on the 155-mile-long Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.
The U.N. Command allows tour groups in the Joint Security Area, which was created as part of the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War 70 years ago next week. Tourists can visit the area from South Korea while unarmed soldiers trail closely behind.
The man detained on Tuesday was the first known American held in North Korean custody since？ Bruce Byron Lowrance？ was detained for a month after illegally entering the country from China in 2018.？
The American student Otto F. Warmbier was arrested in Pyongyang in 2016, accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster from the wall of his hotel. Mr. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After being held for 17 months in North Korea, Mr. Warmbier, then 20, was flown from Pyongyang to Ohio, his home state, in a coma in June 2017. He died a week later.
？Although the inter-Korean border is strewn with land mines and guarded by layers of tall barbed-wire fences, people from both Koreas have crossed the DMZ, including several American soldiers stationed in the South.
In 2014, an unidentified American was detained on a riverbank near the South’s western border with North Korea after trying to swim into the North. After he was apprehended, he told South Korean officials that he had intended to go to North Korea to meet its leader, Kim Jong-un. Before he entered North Korea from China, Mr. Lowrance was also detained by South Korean soldiers while approaching the inter-Korean border.
But defections through Panmunjom are highly unusual.
A South Korean soldier assigned to the Joint Security Area defected to the North in 1991. In 2017, a North Korean soldier？ ran across ？Panmunjom through a hail of bullets ？from fellow Communist soldiers trying to stop him. The defector survived multiple bullet wounds.
Relations between North Korea and the United States have deteriorated in recent years as the North has ramped up its nuclear and missile programs, defying international sanctions.
The fate of American citizens held in North Korea is not always clear. Some are voluntarily released while others have faced criminal charges of committing “hostile acts” and？ have been only freed when American officials, like former President Bill Clinton, have visited Pyongyang to request their release.
North Korea released three American detainees in ？2018 after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang to pick them up. North Korea treated their release as a sign of good will and a merciful diplomatic gesture aimed at facilitating ？Mr. Kim’s summit meeting with President Donald J. Trump in Singapore ？later that year.
Choe Sang-Hun is the Seoul bureau chief for The Times, focusing on news in North and South Korea. More about Choe Sang-Hun
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