Investigation for 96,000 abductees have just begun

Joongang Daily
Jul. 7, 2011


　 South Koreans taken to the North during the Korean War have suffered from their abduction, guilt-by-association for their families, and the forgetfulness of the public. The Korean War Abductees’ Family Union is taking the lead to alleviate such pain.

The National Committee on Investigating Abductions by North Korea during the Korean War and Restoring Honor of the Victims, which had its first meeting last December, is chaired by Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik and has 14 members, including Minister of Unification, Hyun In-taek, experts, and family members of the abductees.

The Committee has decided to take the 61st anniversary of the Korean War as an opportunity to find out the truth about the abductions, assess the damage and recover the honor of the families of the abductees. To do so, the Committee is receiving reports both in Korea (contact info: 1661-6250) and overseas through diplomatic offices. The number of abductees during the Korean War is thought to be 96,000.

Park Seon-yeong, the member of the National Assembly who proposed the relevant act, emphasized that, to add force, the Korean government needs to appoint a Special Affairs Minister on the abductees as Japan did for 17 abducted Japanese.

Ryu Ho-yeol, professor of North Korean Studies at Korea University, said, “South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments investigated incidents all the way up to the Donghak Peasant Revolution in 1894, but did not investigate the abduction of civilians by North Korea during the Korea War, which is the most tragic incident of Korean history.” He added, “The National Committee on Investigating Abductions by North Korea during the Korean War and Restoring Honor of the Victims is meaningful in that it was established to investigate past affairs in a fair way.”

Lee Mi-il, president of the Korean War Abductees’ Family Union, whose father was abducted when she was a baby, said, “I felt like my world was collapsing when then-President Kim Dae-jung said in September 2000 that he would make an effort to address the issue of the 480 abductees.” She criticized the then-government for basically abandoning 90,000 Korean War abductees.

Experts emphasized that there is a need to secure domestic and foreign documents proving the systematic North Korean abductions and to prepare for the identification and repatriation of the remains of the abductees by collecting DNA samples from their families. Lee Mi-il said that she hopes that the families of the abductees will one day no longer need to sing “Miari Hill of Sadness.”