Abductee: Son Hae-kyeong
Recorded Date: November 23rd, 2006


Profile of Abductee

Name: Son Hae-kyeong (male)
Date of birth: April 19, 1925
Place of birth: Seoul
Last address: 14 Namyeog-dong Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Date of abduction: September 28, 1950 (age 25)
Place of abduction: 372 Jigok-ri, Chungju-eup Chungcheongbuk-do, South Korea
Occupation: Driver
Dependants: Parents, 4 Children
Appearance/Personality: Handsome, smart


Profile of Witness

Name: Son Hae-gu (born in 1935)
Relation: Younger brother of the abductee
Type of Witness: Direct witness


Summary of Abduction

- On around the Recapture of Seoul Sept. 28th 1950, North Korean soldiers came and took the abductee who was a truck driver.
- They must have thought he would be useful because they needed a means of transportation to run to the North. They made a raid into abductee’s house 4 a.m. in the morning.
- After the abductee was taken, his older brother was mistakenly recognized as a member of Association of Broadcasting (an anti-communist group) and murdered. Younger brothers helped the family to earn a living by working at the American and Korean army bases respectively.


Detail of the Abduction

Q. What did your father do for a living at the time of abduction?
He was a truck driver. He worked for a truck company established in Chungju in the Japanese colonial period.

Q. Did he participate any activities of rightist groups?
No. My brother could not afford to do so. We lived from hand to mouth. We farmed a small piece of land that we had purchased in the Japanese colonial period. As he started working as a driver, things got better. But it didn’t last long as my brother got abducted.
Since then, I helped my family to get by with money I earned by working in the American army base in Korea.

Q. Could you describe how he was abducted?
On around the Recapture of Seoul Sept. 28th 1950, North Korean soldiers needed fast means of transportation to run to the North. I think someone tipped them off about my brother who was a truck driver. At the time, he was taking precautions by working as a peasant in the fields during the day and coming home only after the sun was down.
But he eventually got abducted by North Korean soldiers who burst into the house at around 4 a.m. In a fraction of time before he got grabbed by the soldiers, he thought about running away. However, soon he gave up when he saw a number of North Korean soldiers surrounding the house. There was no way to escape and no use to resist. No news of him since then.
I don’t remember the exact date of his abduction, but I assume it was around September 28th. My brother was 25 years old at that time.



Reason behind the Abduction

Q. Why do you think he was abducted?
On around the Recapture of Seoul Sept. 28th 1950, UN allied soldiers advanced toward South and the North Korean soldiers needed to run back to the North as fast as they could. They needed trucks and truck drivers and abducted my brother.


News after the Abduction

Q. Any news after the abduction?
After the abduction, my sister met a person who had managed to escape from the group of abductees, in which my brother was included. She could find very little information from him, though. And now it is not even possible to ask him about my brother because he passed away.

Q. What did the escapee say?
When my sister met him, he asked her, “Didn’t Hae-kyeong come home yet?” He said that he thought my brother had run away before him. I think my brother did not have a chance to escape under the North Korean soldiers’ close watch.

Q. Do you know where he was taken to?
I don’t know. They must’ve taken him in a military truck, not a truck he used to drive when working. They did not dare to move in the daytime, afraid of air bombing. They only moved at night, which made it even harder to track what path they had taken.

Q. Did everyone in the town know about his abduction?
At that time, no one dared to bring up a subject like that. A tiny slip of the tongue could get you into a serious trouble. So only my family knew about his abduction.