Families remain hopeful of finding wartime abductees


Kwon Young-hwan was 15 when two armed men forced their way into his home while his family slept. One had a black pistol and the other had a long rifle slung across his shoulder.

“They came first to me and asked where my father was,” Kwon, now 76, recalled. It was Aug. 8, 1950, nearly two months after the Korean War broke out.

The North Korean soldiers forced his father Kwon Tae-sul, then head of Jung District Office in Seoul, into a car outside the house.

“Before following them, our father knelt down to hold my 3-year-old sister and told her, ‘I’ll be away for a while,’” Kwon said.

It is the last time that he saw his father. “I still remember what happened that day clearly because my mother told me I must not forget it.”

Then his family fled to South Chungcheong Province to escape the North Korean forces. When they returned home after the war in 1953, they heard that he had been imprisoned for a while before being taken to North Korea.

Tens of thousands of South Koreans, mainly civil servants, businessmen and intellectuals, are believed to have been kidnapped by North Korea during the war.

But Pyongyang denied forcibly holding anyone and their families’ desperate call for reunion, let alone their return, has been largely ignored in inter-Korean talks.

Although the Seoul government insists that it is working continuously to persuade the North to resolve the issue, tangible progress has not been made.

“I still don’t know whether my father is still alive or not,” Kwon said. He once wrote a letter to Cheong Wa Dae, demanding that the government take more serious action.

The Seoul government has kept quiet about the issue for fear that it might hinder the inter-Korean talks, according to Lee Mi-il, chief of the Korean War Abductees Family Union.

Lee’s father, a factory owner in Seoul, was taken away to the North when she was 18 months old.

She founded the organization in 2000 and has campaigned to raise awareness of the issue.

In response to the continuous efforts by Lee and some 700 members of the group, the Seoul government has recently started to take a more serious look at the issue.

In 2010, a special committee was launched, headed by Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik. It officially classified for the first time 392 South Koreans as being abducted by North Korea during the war.

Last month, the committee also identified an additional 351 people, bringing the total of wartime abductees to 743.

But the number is just a fraction of some 100,000 citizens believed to have been kidnapped by the North.

“We found a document made for the truce talks in 1952, and it says 82,900 South Koreans were abducted, but we believe the number is almost 100,000,” she said.

Lee admits many of them were probably dead, but their families are still waiting for the return of those who may still be alive or at least of their remains.

In the Seoul government’s attempt to find a realistic solution, it used the term “separated families” instead of “abductees” in consideration of the North’s stance.

“But it’s time to bring the word back and force them (the North) to admit their crime,” Lee said.

“Until we bring our loved ones homes, we will do everything we can,” she added.

Her union last year lobbied for the passage of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, paving the way for the U.S. government to resume and continue the search for the South Korean abductees and the remains of some 8,000 American soldiers in North Korea.

They plan to make a formal appeal to the U.N. Human Rights Commission to examine the issue, Lee said.

The problem, however, is that time is running out for them as many older people are passing away or abandon hopes of finding their relatives, she added.

But the 76-year-old Kwon said he is not giving up on his father, who would be 109 if still alive.

“I know he won’t be alive, but I just want to know when my father died and, if I can, have his remains brought back home,” Kwon said, with tears welling up in his eyes.

“I will feel always sorry for him until I bury his body here.”

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcorp.com)