[Opinion] Army Prisoners of War

“Army Second Lieutenant Jo Chang-ho, service number 212966. I report the safe return home.” 10 years ago, on October 24 1994, many Koreans were touched by the scene of the Army prisoner of war who first defected from North Korea saluting the Defense Minister at an army hospital. It was 43 years since Jo had left Seoul in 1951. In his memoir “Return of the Dead” published the following year, Jo called himself a lucky person despite all the hardships in the North. “The luck becomes an agony when I think of unlucky people (who could not return home),” he painfully expressed his feeling in the book.

Since then, the issue of the Army prisoners of war in North Korea has occasionally drawn people’s attention. Army prisoners of war have fled from North Korea every year since 1997, and some families of the war prisoners met with their families in North Korea since 2000 through the reunions of the separated families. At the third reunion in 2001, Jo Geum-rye (age 74) in the South met her husband, who she assumed was dead in North Korea. However, that was all. North Korea maintains its assertion that not a single South Korean Army war prisoner exists on its soil. The South Korean government also consistently insists that Army war prisoners fall into the category of separated families in a broad sense. As a result, the issue of the Army prisoners of war has yet been dealt as an official agenda.

The UN Forces and the North Korean army exchanged lists of prisoners of war on December 18, 1951 while the Korean War was going on. The UN Forces reported 111,000 soldiers to North Korea, and the North gave the list of 7,100 soldiers which were far smaller number than the UN estimate of 88,000. After an 18-month negotiation, prisoners of war on both sides were exchanged over three occasions. At that time, 8,343 Korean armed forces and 5,126 UN soldiers, totaling 13,469 soldiers returned to South Korea. That was less than a tenth of 88,000. Therefore, many South Korean soldiers must still be in the North, though considering those who passed away in North Korea so far.

The Ministry of National Defense recently reported 496 Army prisoners of war are still alive in North Korea, and the numbers of dead and missing are 484 and 175 respectively as of the end of August this year. This will be a tip of the iceberg as these figures are based on statements of North Korean defectors and other concerned people. The prisoners of war went to the battlefield for the sake of the nation and have been living in pain for over a half century. The government can no longer overlook them. If the government ignores those who sacrificed themselves for the country, its people will ignore the government in the end. Now is time for the government to strongly require return of the Army prisoners of war to North Korea.

Song Moon-Hong, Editorial Writer songmh@donga.com