Abductee: Ha Gyeok-hong
Recorded Date: March 17th, 2006


Profile of Abductee

Name: Ha Gyeok-hong
Date of Birth: April, 9, 1921 (lunar calendar)
Place of Birth: Incheon, South Korea
Last Address: 4-2 Namchang-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Date of Abduction: August 2, 1950
Place of Abduction: Home
Occupation: Owner of a Mill, Head of General Affairs Department at the Daehan Young Men’s Association
Education/Career: Commercial High School / Military Officer Attached to a School
Dependents: Wife, 3 Daughters
Appearance/Personality: Handsome / Honest and Frugal


Profile of Testifier

Name: Seong Gap-sun (born in 1924)
Relationship: Wife
Type of Witness: Indirect witness

Summary of the Abduction

- The abductee fled to Bucheon but after a while, he went back to Seoul in order to check the condition of the mill he was running and he was taken to the Security Bureau by the internal police officers.
- He was the head of the general affairs department of Daehan Young Men’s Association while running a mill.


Description of abduction

Q. Could you please describe the situations when the Korean War broke out?

I remember the day when my husband (then my fiancée) and I went to see a show of a famous Japanese actor. It was held at the National Assembly building across the then City Hall. After the show, we walked together to Jongno4-ga. It was a romantic night in March, a month before our marriage.
And the light snow that was falling down gently made the night all the more romantic. Walking with him, I thought I could walk down this road forever. But we had to say good bye as he lived in Wonnam-dong while I lived in Jongno4-ga. He took me home and went back to his place.

We got married on April 9, 1943. But we could not go on our honeymoon trip because Korea was under the Japanese colonial rule and Japan was in the middle of war. Instead, we went for a drive to Namsan. Of all the good memories, the best was the full blown forsythias that we saw when passing the Seoul National University Hospital. We stopped the car there and walked along the fence enjoying yellow forsythias. It is such a beautiful memory that I still remember vividly and sometimes I write it on my diary.

We lived with the family of my husband’s sister. We ran a mill that grinded all kinds of food including red pepper and wheat. Because we were young, we were not rich. But we were not poor, either. We had three daughters. My husband had never complained for having no son but, when a person from the district office came for a census, he would say “Our family has four women and just one man.” He was never hard on me for that, though. And he loved his daughters and liked to take them out. He even took his eldest daughter to a public bath with him when she was very little. He was a devoted husband and father, the type of man who was rare at the time.

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, my eldest daughter was 4 years old, the second was 2, and the youngest was only 100 days old. They were too young to remember the war. I am currently living with my eldest daughter in Canada, and the second daughter is in Los Angeles in the United States.

In the year 1950, my husband was the head of the general affairs department of the Daehan Young Men’s Association In his spare time, he would go to the Corp and work with young people. I was a housewife whose most attention was paid on taking care of the children and husband when he was at home. Therefore I knew little about what kind of work he did at the association.

Q. Please describe the situation when your husband was abducted.

As the war situation got worse, we decided to flee to Sose in Bucheon where my parents-in-laws lived before the bridge over the Han River was cut off. We safely arrived in Sose. But my husband went back to Seoul, worrying about our mill and got abducted there. I think it was August. My father-in-law went to our house to find his son since he had not come back for long. He could not find his son there, and neighbors told him that an Internal Bureau Police officer took his son for questioning.

We did not know where or whom to ask about his whereabouts. People did not know, either. Later we heard that Internal Bureau Police officer took abductees to the place where a library used to stand to torture them. And they took all of them to the North when they retreated.

One man from our neighbors who had been abducted along with my husband escaped and told us that the abductees were all scattered when the bombing started, and some of them managed to escape and some were killed. And several others died of hunger. He said that the rest of them must have been dragged to the North. Hearing all that, I became hopeless in finding my husband.

I heard about his abduction in the middle of August in Sose where my children and I were living with my parents-in-laws. After Seoul was recaptured on September 28, I went to our old house. The first floor had been the mill and the second floor had been our home, but the building was burned down to ashes. Now I had no place to live and no means to make a living. I decided to stay with my parents for a while.

I went to the district office to see if there were any relief goods that I could get, but they said they could not afford to give help to our family. I was angry and sad. My husband was not a soldier who sacrificed his own life for the country, and I understood that the families whose sons and fathers died to defend our nation should be the first to get help. But my husband was not abducted due to his own cause. The government was certainly responsible for his abduction. I trudged home with empty hands, disappointed and dejected.


Reason behind the Abduction

Q. Why do you think he was abducted?
He was the head of the general affairs department of Daehan Young Men’s Association, the famous rightist group and he was an owner of a mill.


News after the Abduction

Q. Have you heard any news about him?
No news we’ve heard since he was abducted.