TEHRAN- American soldier Travis King crossed the heavily fortified wall from South Korea and entered North Korea due to “inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has reported.

King has also "expressed willingness" to seek refuge in North Korea after crossing the border wall on July 18, Pyongyang said in its first comments on the incident.

King was "disillusioned at the unequal American society," KCNA said.

So far, U.S. officials have said they are of the belief that King crossed into North Korea intentionally and have declined to classify him as a prisoner of war.

North Korean investigators have also reached a similar conclusion that he crossed from South Korea deliberately and illegally, intending to stay in the North or in a third country, but added that the investigation was still active. 

"During the investigation, Travis King confessed that he had decided to come over to the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army," KCNA said.

"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."

King was being "kept under control by soldiers of the Korean People's Army" after his crossing, the agency said.
 
U.S. officials have said the North had not provided substantive responses to requests for information on King.

How to classify the 23-year-old has been an open question for the U.S. military.

Despite the fact that he is an active-duty soldier and the United States and Korea technically remain at war, issues such as King's decision to cross into North Korea of his own free will, in civilian clothing, appear to have disqualified him from POW status, U.S. officials have said.

King, who joined the U.S. Army in January 2021 is a cavalry scout with the Korean Rotational Force, which is part of Washington's security agreement with Seoul. 

He had finished serving his service and had been transported by the U.S. military to the airport to return to his home unit in the United States. 

Instead, King left the airport and joined a civilian tour of the area separating the North from the South, where he then ran across despite attempts by South Korean and U.S. military guards to catch him.

The Pentagon said it could not verify King's comments as reported by KCNA and remains focused on his return to the United States. It did not address whether it had heard more details from North Korea.

What the Pentagon can verify is that nearly a third of Black U.S. military service members have reported experiencing racial discrimination, harassment or both during a 12-month period.

That's according to the results of a long-withheld U.S. Defense Department survey that highlighted the grave concerns about racism across the military ranks and was only leaked by American news outlets in 2021. 

Whilst the U.S. military is diverse in its lower ranks, it is largely white men at the top. 

Human rights advocates say discrimination goes unpunished, and racial harassment has played a major role in pushing out minority groups. 

Racism and discrimination against black American service members and other minority groups have been cited in a number of studies and surveys as a disturbing factor and ongoing occurrence in the U.S. military.

In 2021, the same year that King joined the U.S. army, a survey organized by "Blue Star Families" found that 42 percent of service members from minority groups have turned down a military assignment or permanent change of station order because of concerns about racism and discrimination, even when they were aware that doing so can negatively affect their career because of perceptions of racism in the local community.

A Blue Star Family is the immediate family of a U.S. military member who is serving during war. 

The survey found that more than 40 percent of active-duty family respondents also factored in concerns about racial discrimination or safety when listing where they prefer to be based.

About 33 percent of active-duty families and 34 percent of veterans in the survey also reported that concerns about racial and ethnic discrimination were a factor in conversations with family members about whether to continue serving in the U.S. military.

The findings were part of the Blue Star Families' "Social Impact Research 2021: The Diverse Experiences of Military & Veteran Families of Color," that asked 2,731 people, including 622 active-duty spouses, 303 active-duty service members and 306 veterans.

Blue Star Families argued that the survey represents an important starting point for an area of research that has been lacking attention. 

"Around the George Floyd murder and the unrest that summer, we started to recognize that one thing we hadn't been paying as much attention to as we should have is, what are the experiences of military families of color," Kathy Roth-Douquet, CEO of Blue Star Families, said at a virtual event launching the report. 

"What we came to understand is, actually no one had ever asked these questions before... There's sort of a culture of silence about this because it's not what we aspire to be or what we aspire to experience."

Many also reported safety concerns, racial profiling by police, racial slurs, and other forms of discrimination.

57 percent of active-duty family respondents reported hearing military-connected peers make racist remarks or jokes and about 46 percent said they have been the subject of slurs or jokes in their military community at least once since January 2020, according to the report.

About 41 percent of active-duty family respondents said they feared for their personal safety in their military community due to their ethnicity or race at least once since January 2020, with some citing displays of the Confederate flag or discussions about politics "in ways they viewed to be coded racism" as factors that made them feel unsafe.

And about 33 percent of Black active-duty family respondents reported being racially profiled by military law enforcement at least once since January 2020, compared with about 36 percent who said they were profiled by civilian law enforcement. 

Finally, about 39 percent of active-duty service member respondents said their race or ethnicity "significantly" or "slightly" hurt their ability to get ahead at work, including about 48 percent of Black respondents.

"This is just the beginning of the work ahead," the co-chairs of Blue Star Families' racial equity and inclusion committee wrote in the 189-page report. "It is our hope that findings from this report will serve as a framework for policy and program recommendations that will help improve the service experiences of military families of color, strengthening our military overall."

Since 2021, it appears that no reforms have been made, despite widespread research about racism in the military and a black U.S. soldier fleeing to North Korea because of reported racism and discrimination.