『He Is Alive』“It was all because of the Han River”
(No. 1) Dong-A Daily, Feb. 21, 1952

Abducted after days of running

Participants:▲Park In-suk (wife of GuJa-ok, Governor of Gyeonggi Province); ▲YeonKyeong-hwa (wife of Son Jin-tae, President of the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Seoul National University);▲Yang Me-rin (wife of pastor Yang Ju-sam);▲Park Ok-chul (wife of lawyer Gang Byeong-sun);▲ Kim Yeong-ae (wife of Park Seung-cheol, President of Korea Southern Power Corporation);▲Baek Suk-ryang (wife of Hyeon Sang-yun, President of Korea University);▲Kim Bu-rye (wife of An Jae-hong, National Assemblyman);▲Yu Song-juk (wife of Park Jong-man, director of the Fisheries Bureau of the Department of Commerce);▲Lee Dal-nam (wife of Lee Jeong-sun, Chief Editor of Freedom News);▲ Choi Heung-jo(head of news, Dong-A Daily)and ByeonYeong-kwon (reporter, Dong-A Daily)

Moderator: How can we describe the hardships and sufferings that you have gone through since your husbands were taken away by North Korea? The Korean War left our country devastated. Cities and villages were destroyed. Government offices, facilities and traffic infrastructure needed to be built from scratch. Houses were burnt down and household goods taken by the Communists. The precious lives of our sons and daughters were lost on the battlefield. As the fate of our country depended on the war, we were determined to win at all costs. Sacrifices were inevitable and we were ready to bear them. However, seeing you in person today I feel like maybe we have done something wrong and missed something very important. This symposium was organized to console you and to deepen the understanding of and enhance cooperation with readers by sharing your and the other hundreds of thousands of wives’ tragic stories. Please share with us what you are thinking. Let us first start with a few questions that we have prepared. Could you tell us how your husbands were abducted? Mrs. Gu. How was your husband, GuJa-ok, the Governor of Gyeonggi Province, abducted?

Mrs. Gu (Park In-suk): Whenever I think of the day my husband was taken, my heart breaks. At dawn on June 27, a day before Seoul surrendered, we heard an announcement that the capital would be moved from Seoul to Suwon, a nearby city. My husband went to Capitol Hall at around 8a.m. to find out more about the announcement. He talked with the then-Minister of Home Affairs and then-Head of the Bureau of Public Information. They said it was a false announcement, and ordered him to put Gyeonggi Province on full alert. They said that Capitol Hall had everything ready. My husband stood by and waited for an order from Capitol Halluntil 4 p.m. When he had not heard any updated news from Capitol Hall by that time, he went back, only to find that everyone had already left. He came home at around 5 p.m. and we hurried to the Han River to head south. However, military police had blocked the road and stopped everyone from crossing the River. We had to go back to our house. As time went by, we could feel danger closing in. My husband and the rest of us decided to hide in separate places. However, moving from place to place, my husband ended up being caught unawares by a Security Bureau officer at his daughter’s house on the evening of July 30.

Mrs. Son (Yeon Kyeong-hwa): My family was busy seeking a hideout on June 28 when the Communist Army occupied Seoul, so we did not know that he had been abducted. We thought we would meet him when the ROK Army took Seoul again. After Seoul was recaptured on September 28, we waited for him to come and find us. However, he didn’t show up for days. Worried, we went to several places to find out what had happened to him. We found out that he had been taken to the Internal Bureau in Goyang-gun and then abducted by the North. Let me tell you how he was abducted. At around 6 a.m.on June 27, my husband decided to escape south when he heard an announcement that the capital city wasbeing moved temporarily to Suwon. However, he missed his chance to cross the Han River because he went back to his school first to take care of business. Unable to cross the river, he went into a hideout in a basement in Myeongnyun-dong until July 2. On the next day, he moved to a small temple in Samgak Mt. and hid there for two months. However, in the end he was caught and taken to the Internal Bureau aftera person who had been delivering food to him was caught.