US soldier who fled to North Korea to plead guilty to desertion: lawyer

King, who had been stationed in South Korea, made international headlines in July 2023 when he left a tour group and crossed the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea, where he was briefly detained. He is scheduled to formally enter his plea at a Sept. 20 hearing where he will “explain what he did, answer questions from a military judge about why he’s pleading guilty and be sentenced,” Rosenblatt said.

Plea negotiations began about a month agodelaying what would have been the first legal hearing in King’s case, an Article 32 hearing similar to a civilian grand jury proceeding.

King is being held in the Otero County Detention Center in New Mexico, which Fort BlissTexas, uses for its pretrial detainees.

The soldier faced a range of charges, from desertion and child pornography to insubordination, making false official statements and assault – just some of which stemmed from his choice to run to North Korea. King has a long history of legal troubles that began more than a year before he crossed one of the world’s most heavily guarded borders.

In addition to pleading guilty to desertion, Rosenblatt told Military.com in a separate conversation that King will plead guilty to three counts of disobeying a superior officer and one count of assaulting a noncommissioned officer.

“Travis is grateful to his friends and family who supported him and to everyone outside his circle who did not prejudice his case based on the original allegations,” Rosenblatt said.

Michelle McCaskill, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel, confirmed that a plea deal had been negotiated, but stressed that “the guilty plea is subject to acceptance by the military judge.”

“If the guilty plea of ​​Pvt. King is accepted, the judge will sentence King. … If the judge does not accept the guilty plea, the judge may order the case to be tried in a contested court-martial,” McCaskill added in an email to Military.com on Monday.

Jonathan Franks, a spokesman for King’s family, declined to comment “out of respect for the military’s process.”

King’s ordeal began after a series of arrests by South Korean authorities prompted the Army to order the young soldier back to the United States for discipline. However, King never boarded his flight and instead ended up on a civilian tour of the border village of Panmunjom, a major tourist attraction along the Demilitarized Zone. He left the tour and entered North Korea on July 182023.

In September, North Korea suddenly announced it would release King back into US custody.

After King’s return to the U.S., Rosenblatt said in a social media post last month that the soldier “spent three weeks in debriefings and reintegration at Joint Base San Antonio.”

Once her son returned to the United States, King’s mother, Claudine Gates, said she loved him “unconditionally” and was “extremely concerned about his mental health,” according to an earlier statement provided by Franks.

Since the family stepped into the spotlight, Gates has been adamant that “something happened to (the king) while he was deployed.”

Franks said Military.com last year that “it was just a cluster of problems in the fall of ’22” and “it’s all going to hell.” A person connected to King’s family said that time roughly coincided with a time when everyone was deeply moved by the death of King’s younger cousin.

In addition to Rosenblatt, who is a former Army attorney and senior military defense counsel for Bowe Bergdahl, King’s legal team includes Sherilyn Bunn, a civilian attorney from El Paso who “has extensive Fort Bliss experience,” according to the site his company’s website. and two military lawyers.