An Army private who fled to North Korea before being returned home to the United States last month has been detained by the U.S. military, two officials said Thursday night, and is facing charges including desertion and possessing sexual images of a child.
The charging document does not provide significant detail on any of the allegations, though it does accuse King of knowingly possessing a video of a child engaging in sexual conduct last July 10 and says that he solicited a user of Snapchat, a social media platform, to produce images of underage sexual activity.
Sean Timmons, an attorney who specializes in military law at the Tully Rinckey law firm and who reviewed the charging document, said all the transactions that occurred on Snapchat were not secure or private and were accessible by the government.
“He probably reasonably believed his illegal conduct would have no evidentiary trail, but Snapchat actually saves everything,” Timmons said.
Source: Associated Press (Archive link to full article: https://web.archive.org/web/20231020055507/https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-travis-king-army-14794185ea3dfc197a86ba376b1626ea)
But who are you to say this and how do you know? He fled to North Korea for a reason, and avoiding child pornography charges seems like a really good reason to try and avoid the authorities.
If the accusations are true, I wonder if he was dumb enough to tell the DPRK authorities that's the reason he fled.
That would explain why they kicked his ass back to the US.
Could be, but once he did it's no longer possible to find out why from USA media. If he published anything before he become a PR problem for the USA, then that's the most credible bit of information on the story, even if it's false, because at least there's doubt. A later refute by the USA is guaranteed to paint him in a negative light, using true or false information. If Korea published anything, then that's credible as well most likely. Anything the USA says to save face is said to save face. They could use real facts to make their case for them, or they could make things up. We have no way of knowing, so we should assume it's made up.