Lawyer Group, “North Korea has imprisoned Korean War abductees for past 60 years”
Group brings lawsuit against Kim Jong Un at the ICC...
Head of Abductee Family Union and Lawyer Leave for the Hague


Nov. 18, 2013
Donga Daily


Lawyers for Human Rights and Unification of Korea (LHRUK) and the Korean War Abductees’ Family Union (KWAFU) have decided to bring a lawsuit against First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea Kim Jong Un for his role in the abduction of South Korean civilians by North Korea during the Korean War.

LHRUK head Kim Tae Hun, in an interview with this newspaper, said, “We have decided to bring Kim Jong Un to justice at the ICC in order to raise awareness in the international community about North Korea’s war crime of systematically abducting around 100,000 people during the Korean War.” On the 16th, Kim and KWAFU President Lee Mi-Il and six others left for the Hague.

“The use of the ambiguous term “displaced civilian,” not “abductee,” in the Armistice Agreement in 1953 to describe North Korea’s abductions provided the opportunity for North Korea to pretend it knew nothing about the abductions,” Kim said. “We believe that North Korea’s imprisonment for the past 60 years of civilians it abducted from South Korea constitutes an “ongoing crime” and is the basis of our lawsuit submitted to the ICC.”

The lawyer’s group also plans to file lawsuits against Jang Jeong Nam, the head of the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces, Kim Won Hong, head of the National Security Agency, and Chae Bu Il, the head of the People’s Security Agency. “Until now, we have been largely focused on the issue of post-war abductees,” said Kim. “Most of the abductees have grown old over the past 60 years, but if we fail to raise this issue domestically and internationally that will be the same as letting North Korea off the hook.”

On the 18th, representatives from the two organizations will visit the office of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Geneva, Switzerland, to request the commission deal with the wartime abductee issue seriously. They will then travel to the ICC in the Hague, the Netherlands. On the 19th, they will submit a request to confirm the whereabouts of 35 wartime abductees to the U.N. Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID).

After the lawsuit is submitted to the ICC, the court will first examine whether the lawsuit has met all the necessary requirements. If an investigation shows that there has been criminal action, the court will move to implement sanctions. The LHRUK was established on September 10 of this year and has around 100 members.