Pvt. Travis King, the soldier who dramatically ran across the border into North Korea last year, has reached a deal with Army prosecutors and will be pleading guilty to some of the criminal charges against him, according to his lawyer.
Frank Rosenblatt, the attorney, told Military.com in an emailed statement that King will plead guilty to five of the 14 offenses that he was charged with under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. One of the five charges King will plead guilty to is desertion, he said.
King, who had been stationed in South Korea, made international headlines in July 2023 when he left a tour group and dashed across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea, where he was briefly held. He is slated to formally enter his plea at a hearing Sept. 20 in which "he will explain what he did, answer a military judge's questions about why he is pleading guilty, and be sentenced," Rosenblatt said.
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Plea negotiations began about a month ago, postponing what would have been the first legal hearing in King's case, an Article 32 hearing similar to a grand jury proceeding for civilians.
King is being held in Otero County Detention Center in New Mexico, which Fort Bliss, Texas, uses for its pre-trial detainees.
The private was facing a host of charges from desertion and child pornography to insubordination, making false official statements, and assault – only some of which stemmed from his choice to run into North Korea. King has a long history of legal troubles that began more than a year before he bolted across one of the most heavily guarded borders in the world.
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 senior commissioned officer and one count of assaulting a noncommissioned officer.
"Travis is grateful to his friends and family who have supported him and to all outside of his circle who did not prejudge his case based on the initial allegations," Rosenblatt said.
Michelle McCaskill, a spokeswoman for the Army's Office of Special Trial Counsel, confirmed that a plea agreement had been negotiated but stressed that "the guilty plea is subject to the acceptance by the military judge."
"If Pvt. King's guilty plea is accepted, the judge will sentence King. … If the judge does not accept the guilty plea, the judge can rule that the case be litigated 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 Army's process."
King's ordeal began after a spate of arrests by South Korean authorities led the Army to order the young soldier back to the States for discipline. However, King never boarded his flight and, instead, wound up on a civilian tour of the border village of Panmunjom, a major tourist attraction along the Demilitarized Zone. He left the tour and ran into North Korea on July 18, 2023.
In September, North Korea suddenly announced that it would release King back into U.S. 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 was back in the States, King's mother, Claudine Gates, said that she loved him "unconditionally" and that she was "extremely concerned about his mental health," according to a previous statement provided by Franks.
Since the family entered the spotlight, Gates has been adamant that "something happened to [King] while he was deployed."
Franks told Military.com last year that "there was just a cluster of problems in the fall of '22" and "everything goes to hell." A person connected to King's family said that period roughly coincided with a time when everyone was deeply emotional over the death of King's little cousin.
In addition to Rosenblatt, who is a former Army lawyer and the lead military defense counsel for Bowe Bergdahl, King's legal team includes Sherilyn Bunn, a civilian attorney from El Paso who "has extensive experience on Fort Bliss," according to her firm's website, and two military lawyers.
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