GIMPO, South Korea — Prisoners of conflict held for many years after the preventing stopped. Civilian abductees. Defectors. Separated households.
They’re Koreans who symbolize the many years of division and bitter animosities between North and South Korea, which have been cut up by a closely fortified border because the the 1950-53 Korean Struggle.
North and South Koreans aren’t allowed to change visits, telephone calls or letters with their family members on the opposite facet.
Wednesday is the seventy fifth anniversary of the conflict’s starting. The Related Press spoke with Koreans whose ache and sorrow doubtless will not be healed anytime quickly as diplomacy between the Koreas stays dormant.
Lee Seon-wu, who was a South Korean soldier, misplaced three fingers and was captured by Chinese language troops throughout a fierce battle within the jap Gangwon province within the remaining days of the conflict. Like tens of 1000’s of different South Korean prisoners, Lee was held by North Korea even after an armistice ended the preventing. He was pressured to resettle as a miner within the nation’s distant northeast.
In North Korea, Lee mentioned he belonged to the bottom social class and married a poor lady. He additionally lived underneath fixed state surveillance.
In 2006, he fled to South Korea by way of China, solely to be taught that his dad and mom and two of his three siblings had already died. Lee mentioned he was shunned by his nephew, who doubtless nervous Lee would demand the return of land that was initially purchased with compensation cash that authorities gave to his household after they wrongly concluded that Lee had died within the conflict.
Now 94, he doesn’t keep in contact with any kin in South Korea and misses members of the family in North Korea.
Lee mentioned his three daughters in North Korea rejected his provide to flee to South Korea as a result of they feared punishment if caught. Lee mentioned he additionally has a grandson whose dad and mom — Lee’s son and daughter-in-law — died in an accident.
“I am blissful as a result of I’ve returned to my homeland however I shed tears once I take into consideration them in North Korea,” Lee mentioned throughout an interview at his residence in Gimpo, a metropolis close to Seoul.
A complete of 80 South Korean POWs have fled to South Korea since 1994, however solely seven of them together with Lee are nonetheless alive. In 2016, the South Korean authorities estimated about 500 South Korean POWs have been nonetheless alive in North Korea.
Son Myong Hwa, 63, is the North Korea-born daughter of a South Korean POW held within the North. She mentioned her father sang and performed the harmonica nicely however usually drank alone at residence and wept.
Son’s father, who additionally labored as a miner in North Korea, died of lung most cancers in 1984. Son mentioned he left a will asking her to maneuver his ashes to his South Korean hometown when the Koreas are unified.
Son escaped to South Korea in 2005 and introduced her father’s stays to South Korea with the assistance of her brother and sister in North Korea in 2013. Her father’s stays have been finally buried on the nationwide cemetery. However Son mentioned her demand for the federal government to provide her father’s compensation to her has gone unanswered as a result of South Korean legislation solely grants monetary help to returning POWs, not their bereaved households.
Son has been preventing authorized battles to get what she thinks she deserves. She mentioned she will’t again down now as a result of she has misplaced too many issues. She mentioned she discovered that her brother and sister concerned within the smuggling of their father’s stays have been later arrested by North Korean authorities and despatched to a jail camp. The difficulty has left Son estranged from her two different sisters who additionally resettled in South Korea.
“Why am I struggling like this? I harbor sick feeling towards South Korean governments as a result of I believe they’ve deserted POWs left in North Korea,” Son mentioned. “I believe deceased POWs even have honors to be revered so their compensation have to be offered posthumously.”
In 1967, when Choi Sung-Yong was 15, his father was kidnapped by North Korean brokers, whose armed vessels encircled his fishing boat close to the Koreas’ disputed western sea boundary.
Choi mentioned that South Korean officers and a North Korean defector informed him that his father was executed within the early Seventies after North Korean interrogators uncovered his wartime service for a U.S. intelligence army unit.
Choi mentioned his household nonetheless would not maintain an annual conventional memorial service for his father as a result of they don’t know precisely when he died. He mentioned earlier than his mom died in 2005, she requested him to deliver his father’s stays and bury them alongside hers sooner or later.
Now, as head of a civic group representing households of individuals kidnapped by North Korea, Choi flies balloons throughout the border to drop leaflets demanding that North Korea verify the fates of his father and others.
“I need to hear straight from North Korea about my father,” Choi mentioned.
The South Korean authorities estimates greater than 500 South Korean kidnap victims, principally fishermen, are nonetheless held in North Korea.
Choi faces police investigations after the brand new liberal South Korean authorities cracked down on civilian leafleting campaigns to ease tensions with North Korea.
Choi mentioned Tuesday that senior South Korean officers informed him they might attempt to resolve the kidnapping situation as they requested him to halt balloon actions that North Korea views as a significant provocation.
“Our governments have failed to satisfy their duties to seek out the destiny of my father. So I’ve despatched leaflets. However why do South Korean authorities attempt to punish me?” Choi mentioned. “Criminals are in North Korea.”
When Kang Min-do’s household gathered for main conventional holidays, he mentioned his North Korea-born father usually wept quietly when he honored the 2 different kids he misplaced in the course of the chaos of the Korean Struggle.
Kang, who was born to a lady his father remarried in South Korea, mentioned his father informed him bombings, doubtless from U.S. warplanes, scattered his household someplace close to Pyongyang in January 1951 as they have been fleeing to South Korea.
“My father mentioned he tried to seek for them after the bombing ended, however our bodies have been piled so excessive and he simply couldn’t discover anybody,” Kang, 67, mentioned.
Earlier than he died in 1992, Kang’s father hoped that his son would discover his half-siblings someday to inform them how a lot their father missed them. In a video message posted on a South Korean authorities web site, Kang expressed hopes of visiting his father’s grave together with his half-brother and half-sister when the Koreas are unified.
“I want to inform them how a lot our father struggled after coming to the South and the way deeply he missed his older son and daughter,” Kang mentioned.
