SEOUL — Communist North Korea is reaping a propaganda bonanza out of what it claims is the defection of American army private, Travis King, a month after he broke away from a tour group on the line between the two Koreas and dashed to the North Korean side.

Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, breaking its silence on Private King, now is claiming he “confessed that he had decided to come over to the DPRK,” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, “as as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army.”

There’s no telling if he actually made that remark, if the words were placed before him to sign, or if he’s likely to appear on North Korean state TV making the same confession.

That’s always possible. No one forgets the abject confession forced out of Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who was jailed in January 2016 for swiping a North Korean sign as a souvenir, then arrested at the airport, and in June 2017 sent home in a coma to Cincinnati. He died there several days later.

Private King’s fate may not be so harsh. He did not actually commit an offense on North Korean soil other than to enter illegally at the truce village of Panmunjom. That is 40 miles north of Seoul, where the Korean War armistice was signed in July 1953.

The private had joined the tour after fleeing from Incheon International Airport near Seoul where he was to board a flight on his way to face American military authorities for questioning about his jailing in South Korea in an assault case.

The KCNA dispatch, avoiding the background of Private King’s defection, said only that he “expressed his willingness to seek refuge in the DPRK or a third country, saying that he was disillusioned at the unequal American society.”

For North Korea, the question may be how much of a show to make of the defection of a low-ranking soldier who has no secret information to offer and may be of little value as a pawn in a bargaining game. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has escalated the threat level, urging an increase in missile production, while the Americans and South Koreans prepare for ten days of military exercises.

For Private King, the future looks grim regardless of whether the North Koreans hold him or let him go. If they hold him, after getting him to say whatever they want on state TV, he faces the prospect of a life possibly teaching English, as was the fate of several American soldiers who defected decades ago.

And if Private King is released to the United Nations Command, as requested by United States Forces Korea and the Pentagon, he could be court-martialed for going absent without leave, or, more seriously, desertion, for which he would face years in a military prison. He could also receive a dishonorable discharge from the army.

On one point the Americans and North Koreans agree. KCNA said “Travis King admitted that he illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK.” Defense Secretary Austin, right after the private’s  defection, said the soldier had crossed the line into North Korea “willfully and without authorization.”

South Korea’s Yonhap News quoted an American military spokesperson as saying it had yet to “verify” anything KCNA said about Private King. The “priority,” said the spokesperson, “is to bring Private King home.”