SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has expelled a U.S. soldier who crossed into the country in July.
Pvt. Travis King's case comes at a time of high tensions on the Korean Peninsula. King was released to U.S. custody on Wednesday.
Other Americans have entered North Korea over the years, including a few U.S. soldiers.
Some were motivated by evangelical zeal or simply attracted by the mystery of a severely cloistered police state. Others were detained after entering North Korea as tourists. In one tragic case, it ended in death.
Here's a look at those cases:
CHARLES JENKINS
Born in Rich Square, North Carolina, Charles Jenkins was one of the few Cold War-era U.S. soldiers who fled to North Korea while serving in the South.
Jenkins, then an Army sergeant, deserted his post in 1965 and fled across the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. North Korea treated Jenkins as a propaganda asset, showcasing him in leaflets and films.
In 1980, Jenkins married 21-year-old Hitomi Soga, a Japanese nursing student who had been abducted by North Korean agents in 1978.
Soga was allowed to return to Japan in 2002. In 2004, Jenkins was allowed to leave North Korea and rejoin her. Once in Japan, he surrendered to U.S. military authorities and faced charges that he abandoned his unit and defected to North Korea.
He was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 25 days in a U.S. military jail in Japan. He died in Japan in…
