UN Command Says It’s Communicating with North Korea Over Detained US Soldier 

Lt. Gen. Andrew Harrison, deputy commander of the United Nations Command, speaks during a news briefing at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 24, 2023. (AP)
Lt. Gen. Andrew Harrison, deputy commander of the United Nations Command, speaks during a news briefing at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 24, 2023. (AP)
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UN Command Says It’s Communicating with North Korea Over Detained US Soldier 

Lt. Gen. Andrew Harrison, deputy commander of the United Nations Command, speaks during a news briefing at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 24, 2023. (AP)
Lt. Gen. Andrew Harrison, deputy commander of the United Nations Command, speaks during a news briefing at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 24, 2023. (AP)

The deputy commander of the UN Command said Monday it has started conversations with North Korea over an American soldier who ran into the North last week across the Koreas’ heavily armed border.

Gen. Andrew Harrison said the process has started through communications lines set up at the Joint Security Area between the Koreas under the armistice agreement that stopped the fighting of the 1950-53 Korean War. He said the well-being of Pvt. Travis King remains the command’s primary concern, but refused to provide more details, citing the sensitivity of the discussions.

North Korea has remained publicly silent about King, who crossed the border last Tuesday while he was supposed to be heading to Fort Bliss, Texas.

US officials have expressed concern about his well-being and said previously that North Korea was ignoring their requests for information about him.

Harrison said he “remains optimistic,” but said there was no way to know how the conversation with North Korea would proceed. Civilian tours to the Joint Security Area have been suspended since King’s dash across the border.

King’s crossing came at a time of high tensions in the Korean Peninsula, where the pace of both North Korea’s weapons demonstrations and the United States’ combined military exercises have intensified in a tit-for-tat cycle.

Harrison's comments came hours after South Korea's military said a nuclear-propelled US submarine arrived at a port on Jeju Island in the second deployment of a major US naval asset to the Korean Peninsula this month. The arrival of the USS Annapolis adds to the allies' show of force to counter North Korean nuclear threats.

Last week, the USS Kentucky became the first US nuclear-armed submarine to come to South Korea since the 1980s. North Korea reacted to its arrival in Busan by test-firing ballistic and cruise missiles in apparent demonstrations that it could make nuclear strikes against South Korea and deployed US naval vessels.

In between those launches, North Korea’s defense minister issued a veiled threat insisting the Kentucky’s docking in South Korea could be grounds for the North to use a nuclear weapon against it. North Korea has used similar rhetoric before, but the statement underscored how much relations are strained now.

Analysts say North Korea may wait weeks or even months to provide meaningful information about King to maximize leverage and add urgency to US efforts to secure his release. Some say North Korea may try to wrest concessions from Washington, such as tying his release to the United States cutting back its military activities with South Korea.

The United States and South Korea have been expanding their combined military exercises and increasing regional deployments of US strategic assets like bombers, aircraft carriers and submarines in a show of force against North Korea, which has test-fired around 100 missiles since the start of 2022.

The Annapolis, whose main mission is destroying enemy ships and submarines, is powered by a nuclear reactor but is armed with conventional weapons. The Annapolis mainly docked at Jeju to load supplies, but Jang Do Young, a spokesperson of South Korea’s navy, said the US and South Korean militaries were discussing whether to arrange training involving the vessel.



At Least 13 People Killed in Pakistani Strikes on Suspected Militant Hideouts in Afghanistan

In this file photo, taken on August 3, 2021, Pakistan Army troops patrol along the fence on the Pakistan Afghanistan border at Big Ben hilltop post in Khyber district. (AP/File)
In this file photo, taken on August 3, 2021, Pakistan Army troops patrol along the fence on the Pakistan Afghanistan border at Big Ben hilltop post in Khyber district. (AP/File)
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At Least 13 People Killed in Pakistani Strikes on Suspected Militant Hideouts in Afghanistan

In this file photo, taken on August 3, 2021, Pakistan Army troops patrol along the fence on the Pakistan Afghanistan border at Big Ben hilltop post in Khyber district. (AP/File)
In this file photo, taken on August 3, 2021, Pakistan Army troops patrol along the fence on the Pakistan Afghanistan border at Big Ben hilltop post in Khyber district. (AP/File)

Local Afghans and the Pakistani Taliban said Wednesday that civilians, including women and children, were killed after Pakistan launched rare airstrikes inside neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistani security officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with regulations, told The Associated Press that Tuesday's operation was to dismantle a training facility and kill insurgents in the province of Paktika, bordering Afghanistan.
Residents in the area told an AP reporter over the phone that at least 13 people were left dead, adding that the death toll could be higher. They also said the wounded were transported to a local hospital.
Meanwhile, in a statement, Mohammad Khurasani, the spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed that 50 people, including 27 women and children, have died in the strikes.
Pakistan has not commented on the strikes. However, on Wednesday, the Pakistani military said security forces killed 13 insurgents in an overnight intelligence-based operation in South Waziristan, a district located along eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province.
The strikes are likely to further spike tensions between the two countries. Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban government denounced the attack, saying on Tuesday that most of the victims were refugees from the Waziristan region and promising retaliation.
The TTP is a separate group but also a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
In March, Pakistan said intelligence-based strikes took place in the border regions inside Afghanistan.
Pakistan has seen innumerable militant attacks in the past two decades but there has been an uptick in recent months. The latest was this weekend when at least 16 Pakistani soldiers were killed when TTP attacked a checkpoint in the country’s northwest.
Pakistani officials have accused the Taliban of not doing enough to combat militant activity across the shared border, a charge the Afghan Taliban government denies, saying it does not allow anyone to carry out attacks against any country.