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THE US Military has charged a soldier who escaped into North Korea with offenses ranging from desertion and assault to solicitation of child pornography.
Travis King, 23, ran across the Demilitarized Zone on July 18 and was promptly captured by North Korean authorities.
He remained in custody there until last month, when American and Swedish officials managed to broker his release.
King is now facing eight different charges, according to Reuters, which broke the news.
Military officials have deferred questions about King’s legal fate for weeks.
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They said their efforts had been focused on nursing him back to health after he was in captivity for two months.
King, who was flown to a military hospital in Texas on September 28, has still not publicly explained why he ran across the border.
Reuters also received a statement from the soldier’s mother Claudine Gates.
She asked that King 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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