US Army charges Travis King with desertion for crossing into North Korea: Report

Army private Travis King, who bolted to North Korea earlier this year, has been charged with a host of crime from the U.S. ranging from desertion to possessing child pornography, according to a report from Reuters.

King faces eight total charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which also include making false statements and disobeying superior officers.

According to Reuters, the Army has charged him of broad misconduct prior to his escape to North Korea, including a previous attempted escape from U.S. military custody in October 2022. 

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King has also been accused of soliciting a Snapchat user in July 2023 to "knowingly and willingly produce child pornography." He was also accused of possession of child pornography.

He was also charged with insubordination for leaving his base after curfew and drinking alcohol in violation of Army regulations.

According to a statement, obtained by Reuters, a family spokesperson, King's mother, Claudine Gates, asked that her 23-year-old son "be afforded the presumption of innocence."

"The man I raised, the man I dropped off at boot camp, the man who spent the holidays with me before deploying did not drink," Gates said. "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."

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King, a Private 2nd Class in the U.S. Army who has served since 2021, entered North Korea on foot on July 18, when he reportedly sprinted away from a tour group into the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

The incident happened after King finished approximately two months in a South Korean detention facility following a physical altercation with locals, a senior defense official previously told Fox News. Throughout the time he was held at the facility, he made comments that he did not want to come back to America, according to a U.S. official. 

North Korea's state media reported that King confessed to crossing into the North because of "inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army."

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"During the investigation, Travis King confessed that he had decided to come over to the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army," state media outlet Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. "He also expressed his willingness to seek refuge in the DPRK or a third country, saying that he was disillusioned at the unequal American society."

King was eventually returned to U.S. custody in September. 

"The relevant organ of the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] decided to expel Travis King, a soldier of the U.S. Army who illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK, under the law of the Republic," KCNA wrote, according to translations provided by Yonhap News Agency.

King was flown to a military hospital in Texas on Sept. 28 for medical and mental health evaluations.

Details are still scarce about King's treatment in North Korean custody and the soldier has not publicly explained why he fled to one of the world's most reclusive nations.

Reuters, Timothy Nerozzi and Liz Friden contributed to this report.

Thousand of remote IT workers for US companies sent wages to North Korea to fund weapons programs, FBI says

Thousands of information technology (IT) workers who have contracted with U.S. companies have secretly sent millions of dollars in wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program, FBI and Department of Justice officials said.

The workers were dispatched by North Korea to work remotely for U.S. companies have been using false identities to get the job, authorities said Wednesday at a news conference in St. Louis. The money paid to them was funneled to the North Korean weapons program, authorities said. 

The workers lived primarily in China and Russia and deceived businesses into hiring them as freelance remote employees, the FBI said. They found various ways to make it look like they were working in the United States, including paying Americans to use their home Wi-Fi connections, said Jay Greenberg, special agent in charge of the St. Louis FBI office.

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"We can tell you that there are thousands of North Korean IT workers that are part of this," spokeswoman Rebecca Wu said.

The IT workers generated millions of dollars and, in some cases, infiltrated computer networks and stole information from the companies that hired them, authorities said. Officials didn't reveal the names of the companies that hired the workers or how federal authorities became aware of the scheme. 

North Korea has used a variety of criminal schemes to fund its regime.

In 2016, four Chinese nationals and a trading company were charged in the U.S. with using front companies to evade sanctions targeting North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistics initiatives.

In February, United Nations experts said that North Korean hackers working for the government stole record-breaking virtual assets last year estimated to be worth between $630 million and more than $1 billion. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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