[USFK Forums] Son of Korean War Abductee to NK Has Last Wish [Korea Times]

[C. Y. Lee]

[Uploaded by C. Y. Lee, Tuesday, October 25, 2005] Yesterday was the United Nations Day, still remembered at the United Nations Cemetery in Pusan. Veterans of the Korean War paid tribute at a grave of his comrade at the cemetery, according to a photo. I will ask Mike to upload it as soon as the photo has been forwarded via e-mail. The Korea Times carried an interview with Lee Kyung-chan, 67, who used to work with me at Korean War Abductees' Family Union. Here is an article of the Times on the subject as follows:

Son of Korean War Abductee to NK Has Last Wish

The Korea Times, Monday, October 24, 2005

By Seo Dong-shinStaff Reporter

[Photo] Lee Kyung-chan

Lee Kyung-chan, 67, remembers the day when the North Korean army entered Seoul. It was June 28, 1950, and he, then a 12-year-old, watched the mechanized units from the North with much more excitement than fear.

What turned his excitement to anxiety was the whispering of the adults at night over what to do with the children. Soon, six brothers and sisters, including Lee, were dispersed among the relatives, as his father, who had been serving as a prosecutor since the nation’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, was a likely target for retribution.

``At that time, society was deeply divided into the right and left, as it is now,’’ Lee said in an interview with The Korea Times. ``I suppose my father wasn’t free from dealing with public security cases. As soon as the war broke out, our house came under some strangers’ surveillance, possibly those from the South’s Workers’ Party.’’

What makes the memory of those days and following decades hard to swallow, Lee recalls, took place between July 7 and 9 that year. At the time his father, then 40 years old, would visit his sons and daughters disguised as a farmer. But one day, he disappeared.

Over the past few decades of searching for his whereabouts, Lee managed to figure out how his father disappeared. He had been taken from the streets of Chongno to Sodaemun Prison and from there to Pyongyang, Lee believes. He showed a copy of a magazine issued in 1950, where an article of an escapee testifies having seen Lee’s father during an internment.

During the 1950-53 Korean War, tens of thousands of South Koreans, mostly intellectuals or anti-communists, are believed to have been abducted by the North. Although no official data exists, one government record in 1952 puts the count at 82,959.

U.S. State Department documents made in South Korea at that time, some of which Lee keeps carefully, contain similar reports. North Korea is said to have used the abductees for propaganda or to make up for a lack of human resources or expertise in the North.

As if the abduction of father and following economic hardship was not enough, the South Korean government kept Lee’s family under surveillance for decades. Their residences were taken special notice of, and they could not travel abroad.

``I can understand that. For as rare as it might have been, there were some cases in which the abducted South Koreans, trained as North Korean spies, were dispatched to the South, ’’ Lee said. ``In that sense, it was natural for the government to keep an eye on us.’’

He added that as national security was a top priority in those days, he could endure some infringements on his basic rights.

The board member of the Korean War Abductees’ Family Union (KWAFU), after all, firmly believes that the contemporary yardstick of human rights cannot make judgments on the past, which had its own priorities and norms.

Nevertheless, Lee feels bitter.

``We have done our best to meet the special requirement of those times. Now it’s time for the government to take responsibility and help us in this dialogue-first era with the North,’’ Lee said.

In fact, the KWAFU was launched in November 2000, encouraged by the inter-Korean summit held in June that year. The summit and the following thaw in inter-Korean relations instilled hope in the families of Korean War abductees, most of whom have resigned over their lost family members, thinking it would be impossible to meet them again as long as the South and North Korea remained enemies.

``After the summit, we felt it was time to talk about our issues,’’ Lee recalled.

But after a few years, they began to feel their frustration rising.

South and North Korea reached an agreement to confirm the lives and whereabouts of ``those who went missing’’ around the war period at the Red Cross talks in September 2002. But further agreements on the issue did not come, as the South also wanted to include the issue of the abducted to the North after the war, whose existence the North flatly denies and refuse to discuss with the South.

Lee cannot understand Seoul’s stance.

``I suspect there is some political intention. The government seems to want to avoid the issue of wartime abductees because they are victims of ideological confrontation,’’ said Lee. ``As when there is a fire, why can’t they save those that can be saved first, selfish as it might sound?’’

Lee said that family members of the abductees after the war sympathize with the families of wartime abductees.

``The government compiles the data as to the abducted after the war, and some of them have even returned to the South. The same for the South Korean prisoners of wars (POWs) during the war,’’ Lee said. ``The number of wartime abductees have not been estimated by the government. And not a single one of them has returned. It’s like they are a totally forgotten people.’’

He cannot understand the North’s stance on the issue either.

``The matter of wartime abductees is more about returning their bodies now, than to find them alive. Most of them are now dead, the North won’t have to feel insecure about what they would say, for the dead cannot speak.’’ ``Now I’m nearing my 70s,’’ Lee said.

``I know that my time is near. And that is a problem because I want closure before I die.’’

saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr 10-24-2005 20:25