The US Army private who bolted across the South Korean border into North Korea last year will plead guilty to desertion and assault as part of a plea deal, according to his lawyer.
Travis King will also cop to disobeying an officer, and assaulting a noncommissioned officer, his attorney Frank Rosenblatt told CNN Monday.
“US Army Private Travis King will take responsibility for his conduct and enter a guilty plea. He was charged by the Army with fourteen offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” Rosenblatt said in a statement. “He will plead guilty to five of those, including desertion.”
King will plead not guilty to possession of child pornography charges — stemming from an alleged incident where he tried to obtain child porn using Snapchat — which Rosenblatt expects to be dropped.
King — who fled to North Korea in July 2023 after getting sprung from a Seoul jail for allegedly punching someone at a club — will plead guilty at a court marital hearing and “explain what he did” in Fort Bliss, Texas, on Sept. 20, when he’ll also be sentenced, the lawyer added.
“Travis is grateful to his friends and family who have supported him, and to all outside of his circle who did not pre-judge his case based on the initial allegations,” Rosenblatt said.
King was accused of a laundry list of misconduct by the Army before his desertion – which included possession of child porn, insubordination stemming from drunken incidents where he left his base after curfew, and fights with fellow soldiers.
About a week after he was released from South Korean prison over the club fight in July 2023, the Army transported him to an airport to fly him back to Texas – but he managed to slip away.
The following day he joined a tour group visiting the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, and bolted across the border when they arrived.
There he was picked up by North Korean soldiers, and the hermit nation disseminated a statement supposedly from King himself explaining he fled because he was disillusioned with America.
“[King] confessed that he illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army and was disillusioned about the unequal US society,” North Korean officials said.
He remained in North Korea until September 2023, when he was hauled back to US custody at the Chinese border.
King’s family stood by him after his defection, explaining that he did not drink before deploying to South Korea.
“A mother knows her son, and I believe something happened to mine while he was deployed. The Army promised to investigate what happened at Camp Humphreys, and I await the results,” said his mother, Claudine Gates, in a statement at the time.
