There have been a small number of US soldiers who fled to North Korea during the Cold War, including Charles Jenkins, who deserted his army post in South Korea in 1965 and fled across the DMZ. He appeared in North Korean propaganda films and married a Japanese nursing student who had been abducted by North Korean agents. He died in Japan in 2017.
In recent years, some Americans have been arrested in North Korea after allegedly entering the country from China. They were later convicted of espionage and other anti-state acts, but were often released after the US sent high-profile missions to secure their freedom.
In 2018, North Korea released the last three known American detainees as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was engaged in nuclear diplomacy with then-president Donald Trump. The high-stakes diplomacy collapsed in 2019 amid wrangling over US-led sanctions on North Korea.
Tuesday’s border crossing happened amid high tensions over North Korea’s barrage of missile tests since the start of last year. The US earlier on Tuesday sent a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea for the first time in decades as deterrence against North Korea.
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