North Korea said that Travis King confessed to crossing into the country because of “inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army”, state media reported on Wednesday.
It was the first public acknowledgement of the incident by Pyongyang.
Pte Travis King, dashed into the North while on a civilian tour of the Joint Security Area on the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas.
US officials have said they believe Pte King crossed the border intentionally.
North Korean investigators have also now concluded that he crossed deliberately and illegally, with the intent to stay there or in a third country, state news agency KCNA said.
“During the investigation, Travis King confessed that he had decided to come over to the DPRK as he harboured ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army,” KCNA reported, using the initials of North Korea's official name.
“He also expressed his willingness to seek refugee in the DPRK or a third country, saying that he was disillusioned at the unequal American society.”
The Pentagon on Tuesday said it could not verify the comments claimed to have been made by Pte King, but that Washington remained focused on his safe return.
“The department’s priority is to bring Pte King home, and that we are working through all available channels to achieve that outcome,” a Pentagon representative said.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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