[USFK Forums] Daughter Call for Abducted Father's Return From North

[C. Y. Lee]

[Uploaded by C. Y. Lee, Monday, October 24, 2005] Here is one of the sad stories on media last week. The Chosun Ilbo, a leading vernacular daily, carried a column on Thursday, October 20, 2005 entitled "If I were a North Korean," emphatically pointing out her appeal in writing to meet President Roh Moo-hyun twice in the capacity as head of her group resulted in vain. Note: President George Bush spent 40 minutes to meet with Mr. Kang Cheol-hwan, a reporter of The Chosun Ilbo who defected from North Korea.

Daughter Calls for Abducted Father's Return From North

The Korea Times, Wednesday, October 19, 2005

By Kim Cheong-wonStaff Reporter

[PHOTO] Choi Woo-young, president of the Families of the Abducted and Detained in North Korea /Yonhap

Choi Woo-young, 35, president of the Families of the Abducted and Detained in North Korea (FAD), still vividly remembers the day when her father and 11 other fishermen were abducted by North Koreans.

``The entire family got together to hold a service to honor our ancestors. My younger brother suddenly rushed into the house, saying that he heard that my father’s fishing boat, Tongjin-ho, was kidnapped,’’ said Choi, daughter of Choi Chong-suk, the captain of the boat.

The fishing boat was captured by the North near the maritime border on the West Sea on Jan. 15, 1987.

``He went out to sea to fish, and it was the last time I saw his face. He is still a 42-year-old father to me although 18 years have passed since his disappearance,’’ she said.
After being separated from her father at the age of 17, her mother tried to earn a living by running a shabby restaurant.
She came to know that her father was detained in a North Korean camp for political prisoners in 1999.
Ahead of her father’s 60th birthday, which falls on Oct. 26, she put an advertisement in a local newspaper yesterday with a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to return her father and the other crew members.

``Oct. 26 is my father’s 60th birthday. Every year on his birthday, I feel helpless because I cannot do anything for him. Although I spent a lot of money on the ad, I don’t regret it because it is my birthday present to my father,’’ she said.

In the ad, she wrote that ``I know that you (Kim Jong-il) are a dutiful son as you are carrying out large-scale commemoration projects for your late father Kim Il-sung. I strongly believe that you, as a son, understand how I feel.’’

She said that the issue of abductees strongly depends on Kim Jong-il’s decision.

``Please return my father, who is getting old, to his family. I think true unification begins when many people like my father can come back home after crossing the border,’’ she wrote.
The 12 Tongjin-ho sailors are among the more than 480 South Koreans that the government has listed as kidnapped by North Korea and haven’t returned.

The communist state claims they went to the North voluntarily.

She also urged the South Korean government to make more efforts to bring the abductees home.

``I am disappointed with the government although it said it was trying its best. But there have not been any visible results. When the South Korean government sent North Korean ``long-term unconverted prisoners’’ to the North, we were hoping that our family members could return to the South,’’ she said.

She said that the South Korean government should place priority on the abduction issue in its relations with North Korea as Japan has done.

``The Tokyo government received Pyongyang’s apology about the abduction of a dozen Japanese, but the Seoul government didn’t even try to raise the issue of thousands of detained citizens in the North,’’ she said. `

`When I saw the abducted Japanese return to their country, I felt a sense of shame due to our government’s lack of concern about this matter,’’ she added.

The kidnapping issue has heightened here since 2002, when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a landmark visit to Pyongyang. Koizumi received an admission of guilt and an apology from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who said that the North had abducted 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and the 1980s to teach its agents Japanese.

``In fact, many of the abductees’ families are aged, spending their last days in agony over their lost ones. Many have already passed away after years of suffering,’’ she said, asking for an urgent resolution to the issue.

Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the North has abducted 3,790 South Koreans, the South Korean government said. The two Koreas are still technically at war since a peace treaty was not signed at the end of the war.

kcw@koreatimes.co.kr 10-19-2005 17:59