By Hyonhee Shin, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -An American&nbsp;soldier&nbsp;facing&nbsp;disciplinary&nbsp;action&nbsp;fled across the inter-Korean border into&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;on Tuesday and was believed to be in&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korean custody, U.S. officials said, creating a fresh crisis for Washington in its dealings with the nuclear-armed state.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed concern for the&nbsp;soldier, who the U.S. military in&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;said joined an orientation tour of Joint Security Area between the&nbsp;Koreas and "wilfully and without authorization crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People&rsquo;s Republic of&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;(DPRK)."
The U.S. Army identified the&nbsp;soldier&nbsp;as Private Travis T. King, who joined in 2021.
"There's a lot that we're still trying to learn," Austin told a news briefing. "We believe that he is in (North&nbsp;Korean)custody and so we're closely monitoring and investigating the situation and working to notify the&nbsp;soldier's next of kin."
The crossing comes at a time of high tensions on the&nbsp;Korean peninsula, with the arrival of a U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine in South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;for a rare visit in a warning to&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;over its own military activities.
North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;has been testing increasingly powerful missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, including a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile launched last week. It fired another ballistic missile into the sea near Japan on Tuesday, South&nbsp;Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing South&nbsp;Korea's military.
Colonel Isaac Taylor, spokesperson for U.S. Forces&nbsp;Korea, said the military was "working with our KPA counterparts to resolve this incident,&rdquo; referring to&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea's People's Army.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said U.S. officials at the Pentagon, the State Department and the United Nations were all working to "to ascertain more information and resolve this situation."
"We're in the early stages," she said, adding that the primary concern was determining the well being of the&nbsp;soldier.
North&nbsp;Korea's mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A DASH ACROSS THE BORDER
The&nbsp;soldier&nbsp;was on a civilian tour with a group of visitors to the Panmunjom truce village when he crossed over the line marking the border, U.S. official say. The Joint Security Area in the demilitarized zone has separated the&nbsp;Koreas since the end of the 1950-53&nbsp;Korean War.
But U.S. officials were stumped about why the&nbsp;soldier&nbsp;fled to&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;and outlined a puzzling series of events on Tuesday.
King had finished serving time in detention in South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;for an unspecified infraction&nbsp;and was transported by the U.S. military to the airport to return to his home unit in the United States, two officials said.
He had already passed alone through security to his gate and then, for whatever reason, decided to flee, one official said. Civilian tours of the demilitarized zone are advertised at the airport and King appeared to have decided to join one, the official added.
Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the&nbsp;soldier&nbsp;had been due to face&nbsp;disciplinary&nbsp;action&nbsp;by the U.S. military. But he was not in custody at the time he decided to flee, one of them said.
A person who said they were part of the same tour group was quoted by CBS News saying they had just visited one of the buildings at the site when "this man gives out a loud 'ha ha ha,' and just runs in between some buildings."
POSSIBLE DEFECTION ATTEMPT
It was unclear how long&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korean authorities would hold the&nbsp;soldier&nbsp;but analysts said the incident could be valuable propaganda for the isolated country.
&ldquo;Historically, the&nbsp;North&nbsp;holds these folks for weeks, if not months, for propaganda purposes (especially if this is a U.S.&nbsp;soldier) before a coerced confession and apology,&rdquo; said Victor Cha, a former U.S. official and&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
&ldquo;It also sometimes requires an American official or ex-official to travel there to obtain the release,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Having high-level White House officials on the ground in Seoul &hellip;. might expedite this, if the&nbsp;North&nbsp;is willing to talk to them.&rdquo;
The detention came as a high-level U.S. delegation led by White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell was in Seoul for meetings with South&nbsp;Korean officials on&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&rsquo;s nuclear program.
Jenny Town, director of 38&nbsp;North, a Washington-based&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;monitoring project, said it was important that the&nbsp;soldier&nbsp;seemingly went to&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;voluntarily.
"This isn't a case of arrest, but whether&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;will accept him as a defector. The last American who tried to defect to&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;was denied and returned," referring to Arturo Pierre Martinez, from El Paso, Texas, who entered&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;in 2014 and gave a news conference there denouncing U.S. policy.
Defection attempts to isolated, authoritarian&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;are extremely rare, although Americans have been detained there in the past.
The State Department tells U.S. nationals not to enter&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;"due to the continuing serious&nbsp;risk of arrest and long term detention of U.S. nationals."
(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin, Soo-hyang Choi, Ju-min Park and Josh Smith; additional reporting by Phil Smith, David Brunnstrom, Matt Spetalnick and Nandita Bose in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Jack Kim and David Brunnstrom, Editing by Tomasz Janowsk, Don Durfee and Alistair Bell)

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US soldier facing disciplinary action flees into North Korea