NORTH KOREA – United States soldier Travis King, who fled to North Korea and was taken into custody there, was sentenced to one year of confinement and then freed based on time already served, according to his lawyer.

King pleaded guilty to five charges – including desertion, assault on a noncommissioned officer and three counts of disobeying an officer – as part of a plea deal that was accepted on Friday by a military judge in Fort Bliss, Texas, said his lawyer Franklin Rosenblatt.

The soldier was facing at least 14 charges – including desertion, assault and solicitation of child pornography – filed by the US Army under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The government moved to dismiss nine offences after he pleaded guilty to five charges. King was stationed in South Korea and was supposed to fly back to Texas last year to face disciplinary hearings after spending nearly two months in a South Korean jail on assault charges following a drunken bar fight.

Instead, he walked out of the airport and crossed the border from South Korea into North Korea in July 2023, while on a civilian sightseeing tour of the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean Peninsula. (Aljazeera)…[+]