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Category: Abductions

January 19, 2007

One POW’s Repatriated Wife Already Reported Dead

She apparently was in ill health and froze to death in police custody, according to Yonhap. I’ll have a link and more details later.  [Update:   here:] One of the nine, who was the wife of a South Korean prisoner of war, apparently froze to death one month ago while she was being questioned by North Korean security authorities after they were deported to the North, a source familiar with North Korean affairs said. The woman, the source said he...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean War
January 16, 2007

China Calls on North Korea to Return Abductees

Some interesting statements emerged from a trilateral summit in Cebu: The leaders of Japan, China and South Korea urged North Korea Sunday to scrap its nuclear weapons and to respond to international humanitarian concerns. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun made the plea in a joint statement after the first summit between the three nations in two years. It is rare for China publicly to raise humanitarian concerns about North Korea....

Categories Abductions/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/WMD
January 10, 2007

Be Sure the Survivors Stay Buried

The South  Korean government is going all out to find the remains of its  Korean War dead:  The Defense Ministry has set up a task force to retrieve and identify the remains of the dead from the 1950-53 Korean War, officials said Wednesday. The team of 85 is modeled after the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. Its mission is to excavate remains and identify them through DNA analysis, they said. Col. Park Sin-han, chief of the team, said they would...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Korean War/ROK Military
January 5, 2007

Yet Again, S. Korea Betrays One of Its Own

Updates:   A great post with a picture that nearly had  me in tears at GI Korea, and another picture here.  First, there was Han Man-Taek, a South Korean POW from the Korean War who escaped from North Korea after 50 years in captivity.   He had been held  by North Korea for all this time,  in violation of the 1953 Armistice.  Han nearly made it to freedom, when Chinese police caught Han and sent him back to almost certain death...

Categories Abductions/China/China & Korea
December 7, 2006

‘Abduction’ Film Update

I’ve been somewhat derelict in plugging the run of the film “Abduction” as it plays in Washington.  The film looks to be having great success here; the producers e-mail me to say that  it’s been held over for a third consecutive week.    I’ve only seen  some extended excerpts  of the film, but the imagery, score, and production values are truly something to behold.  You can tell that two true professionals — National Geographic alumni — created this film.  It’s...

Categories Abductions
November 23, 2006

Betraying Sergeant Chang

What else can be said about something like this?  It’s easy enough to blame the girl on the phone, but in light of past events like this,  the more salient questions are (1) whether she was  just following orders. More on how ROK POW’s lived in North Korean captivity here and here.  And  Staff Sergeant  Chang’s pain didn’t end when he escaped, either: Chang Moo-hwan, 79, a third POW who returned to South Korea after the defection of Cho, said...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Korean War
September 3, 2006

Breaking the Blockade

[Update: Andrei Lankov has a must-read piece on radio broadcasting in the Asia Times Online.] Where there is demand, there will be a supply, and the trickle of alternative information to North Korea, though small, shows signs of persistence and of having a receptive market. In addition to Radio Free NK and Open Radio for North Korea, there is now a Japan-based broadcaster, Shiokaze. The DailyNK interviews its director. Although their original focus is on sending messages to Japanese abductees,...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Japan & Korea/Reconstruction/Refugees/Resistance/Uncategorized
June 30, 2006

Korea, Where Life Imitates Monty Python

This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who. — Monty Python and the Holy Grail [P]ointing out mistakes and bickering over what is right and wrong is not helpful, and in the end the injury rebounds on the abduction victim and the victim’s family….” — Unidentified official, defending South Korea’s low-key reaction to a statement by South Korean abductee Kim Yong Nam, under the careful observation of North Korean minders, that...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Korean Politics/Unintended Humor/WTF?
June 29, 2006

Just Don’t Call Them Reunions

[Update: This picture from the Chosun Ilbo, taken as Kim watches his family leave Kumgang, says it all.] I sometimes get e-mails from a liberal NGO, asking me to support its North Korean family reunion project. These always leave me feeling divided, because I know for a fact that some of those involved are completely sincere in their concern for the people in North and their relatives on the outside. But then, I see how those reunions always turn out,...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Japan/Japan & Korea
June 28, 2006

The End of the Rainbow

Really, this piece by Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki is well reasoned and said. Even if I disagree with much of it, I think they have a good grasp of which threats we ought to be worrying about. The debate about whether regime change would work is competely speculative until we actually try it in earnest, of course. At this point, they had me: [T]he administration should build its North Korea policy around the notion that we need to present...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
June 11, 2006

Laotian Gov’t Releases All 12 Prisoners; No Word Yet on Prisoners in Thailand

Thank you for your calls, letters, and e-mails to the Laotian Embassy; it looks like we’ve helped save ten people from a horrific fate. Thanks also to the other bloggers who linked my posts on this story. On behalf of all activists who persevered for almost two weeks during a rollercoaster drama that saw 10 North Korean refugees endure two separate imprisonments in Laos, a ransom standoff, the ever-present specter of repatriation to North Korea via China, I am most...

Categories Abductions/Human Rights/Refugees/Southeast Asia
May 16, 2006

Korea Diary, 17 May 06

If you need an even better illustration of the idiocy of the Tokdo distraction, read this moving story about the families of two hostages, one Japanese and one South Korean, who married during their captivity in North Korea. Yokota expressed gratitude that his son-in-law was a South Korean. “I am so lucky to have a South Korean son-in-law, not a North Korean. I am so happy that I can hope that our families may meet one another again. He said...

Categories Abductions/Activism/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Europe/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Inside NK/Islam/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/News Links/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/WMD
May 15, 2006

Kofi Annan Calls on N. Korea to Account for Abductees

Well, it’s a start. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday said North Korea must be held to account for the suffering and rage of people it kidnapped and the anxiety of families who never discovered what happened to their loved ones. He called on the North to return every one of those it abducted in its bizarre campaign in the 1970s and 80s. He also called on human rights and counterfeiting to be dealt with separately from, and (impliedly) after...

Categories "United" Nations/Abductions/Counterfeiting/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks