Relatives described Pvt. Travis King, 23, as a quiet loner who did not drink or smoke and enjoyed reading the Bible. After growing up in southeast Wisconsin, he was excited about serving his country in South Korea. Now King’s family is struggling to understand what changed before he dashed into a country with a long history of holding Americans and using them as bargaining chips.

“I can’t see him doing that intentionally if he was in his right mind,” King’s maternal grandfather, Carl Gates, told The Associated Press from his Kenosha, Wisconsin, home. “Travis is a good guy. He wouldn’t do nothing to hurt nobody. And I can’t see him trying to hurt himself.”

King was facing discharge from the Army because he was convicted of a crime in a foreign country, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

In February, a court fined King 5 million won ($3,950) after he was convicted of assaulting an unidentified person and damaging a police vehicle in Seoul last October, according to a transcript of the verdict obtained by the AP.

The ruling said King was also accused of punching a 23-year-old man at a Seoul nightclub, though the court dismissed that charge because the victim did not want the soldier to be punished. King served 47 days in prison.

According to the U.S. official, King was escorted to the airport on Monday by two U.S. service members. He was supposed to board an American Airlines flight to Texas that was scheduled to leave at 5:40 p.m. Upon arrival, he was to be met by military personnel who would escort him to Fort Bliss.

North Korean officials are likely interrogating and screening King to determine what to do with him, says historian Erik Scott, the author of a book about Cold War defectors.

"They have in the past both imprisoned defectors but also used them for propaganda, having them star in films, using them either as themselves in these films or as American soldiers to portray the U.S. side in an unflattering light," Scott told Morning Edition on Wednesday.

About a half-dozen American service members have crossed the border since the Korean War ended in 1953, a relatively small group whom Scott says loom large in North Korean propaganda. The last such case was in 1982.

That number doesn't include the several American civilians who have been detained in North Korea over the years — such as college student Otto Warmbier, whose death in 2017 (after he was released in a coma) prompted the U.S. to ban American citizens from traveling to the country, with which it has no diplomatic relations.

While many may think of defection as a political choice between ideologies, Scott says he learned from his book research that peoples' motivations are often very mixed. Some face problems at home, some — like King, evidently — face disciplinary issues and others act on a whim.

"What's remarkable about it is that through this act, although it's a very dangerous one and has very serious consequences, they're catapulted from relative unknowns into international celebrities of a sort that everyone is talking about," Scott adds.

The US-led United Nations Command has initiated talks with North Korea about the American soldier who ran into that country and crossed one of the most militarized borders in the world, according to an official.

But a British lieutenant general who helps lead the UN command stopped short of saying exactly when talks about Travis King began, whether they have been constructive or how many exchanges there have been. The lieutenant general, Andrew Harrison, also would not address any known details about King’s health condition.

“None of us know where this is going to end – I am, in life, an optimist, and I remain optimistic,” Harrison told reporters at a news conference in the South Korean capital, Seoul. “But … I will leave it at that.”

Harrison added that the communications between the UN Command and North Korea about King kicked off through mechanisms which were set up under a 1953 armistice that halted fighting during the Korean war.

He did not elaborate, but the Associated Press reported that Harrison may have been referring to a telephone line between the UN Command – which was created to fight that war – and the North Korean People’s Army at Panmunjom, the border truce village where King crossed on 18 July.

Harrison’s comments about the beginning of a dialogue centering on King’s fate came about four days after the US said North Korea had been unresponsive to its attempts to start talks.