POWs, abductees, defectors and separated families are the legacy of the Korean War

Associated Press

25-06-2025

GIMPO, South Korea (AP) — Prisoners of war held for decades after the fighting stopped. Civilian abductees. Defectors. Separated families.
They are Koreans who symbolize the decades of division and bitter animosities between North and South Korea, which have been split by a heavily fortified border since the the 1950-53 Korean War.
Koreans aren't allowed to exchange visits, phone calls or letters with their loved ones on the other side.
Wednesday is the 75th anniversary of the war's beginning. The Associated Press spoke with Koreans whose pain and sorrow likely won't be healed anytime soon as diplomacy between the Koreas remains dormant.
South Korean prisoner of war isolated after his return home
Lee Seon-wu, who was a South Korean soldier, lost three fingers and was captured by Chinese troops during a fierce battle in the eastern Gangwon province in the final days of the war. Like tens of thousands of other South Korean prisoners, Lee was held by North Korea even after a peace treaty ended the fighting. He was forced to resettle as a miner in the country's remote northeast.
In North Korea, Lee said he belonged to the lowest social class and married a poor woman. He also lived under constant state surveillance.
In 2006, he fled to South Korea via China, only to learn that his parents and two of his three siblings had already died. Lee said he was shunned by his nephew, who likely worried Lee would demand the return of land that was originally bought with compensation money that authorities gave to his family after they wrongly concluded that Lee had died in the war.
Now 94, he doesn't stay in touch with any relatives in South Korea and misses family members in North Korea.
Lee said his three daughters in North Korea rejected his offer to flee to South Korea because they feared punishment if caught. Lee said he also has a grandson whose parents — Lee's son and daughter-in-law — died in an accident.
'I'm happy because I've returned to my homeland but I shed tears when I think about them in North Korea,' Lee said during an interview at his home in Gimpo, a city near Seoul.
A total of 80 South Korean POWs have fled to South Korea since 1994, but only seven of them including Lee are still alive. In 2016, the South Korean government estimated about 500 South Korean POWs were still alive in North Korea.
North Korean daughter fights for her late South Korean POW dad
Son Myong Hwa, 63, is the North Korea-born daughter of a South Korean POW held in the North. She said her father sang and played the harmonica well but often drank alone at home and wept.
Son's father, who also worked as a miner in North Korea, died of lung cancer in 1984. Son said he left a will asking her to move his ashes to his South Korean hometown when the Koreas are unified.
Son escaped to South Korea in 2005 and brought her father's remains to South Korea with the help of her brother and sister in North Korea in 2013. Her father's remains were eventually buried at the national cemetery. But Son said her demand for the government to give her father's compensation to her has gone unanswered because South Korean law only grants financial assistance to returning POWs, not their bereaved families.
Son has been fighting legal battles to get what she thinks she deserves. She said she can't back down now because she has lost too many things. She said she learned that her brother and sister involved in the smuggling of their father's remains were later arrested by North Korean authorities and sent to a prison camp. The trouble has left Son estranged from her two other sisters who also resettled in South Korea.
'Why am I struggling like this? I harbor ill feeling against the South Korean government because I think they've abandoned POWs left in North Korea,' Son said. 'I think deceased POWs also have honors to be respected so their compensation must be provided posthumously.'
South Korean son flies balloons for his father abducted to North
In 1967, when Choi Sung-Yong was 15, his father was abducted by North Korean agents, whose armed vessels encircled his fishing boat near the Koreas' disputed western sea boundary.
Choi said that South Korean officials and a North Korean defector told him that his father was executed in the early 1970s after North Korean interrogators uncovered his wartime service for a U.S. intelligence military unit.
Choi said his family still doesn't hold an annual traditional memorial service for his father because they don't know exactly when he died. He said before his mother died in 2005, she asked him to bring his father's remains and bury them alongside hers in the future.
Now, as head of a civic group representing families of people kidnapped by North Korea, Choi flies balloons across the border to drop leaflets demanding that North Korea confirm the fates of his father and others.
'I want to hear directly from North Korea about my father,' Choi said.
The South Korean government estimates more than 500 South Korean kidnap victims, mostly fishermen, are still held in North Korea.
Choi faces police investigations after the new liberal South Korean government cracked down on civilian leafleting campaigns to ease tensions with North Korea.
Choi said Tuesday that senior South Korean officials told him they would strive to resolve the abduction issue as they asked him to halt balloon activities that it views as a major provocation.
'Our government has failed to fulfill their duties to find the fate of my father. So I've sent leaflets. But why do South Korean authorities try to punish me?' Choi said. 'Criminals are in North Korea.'
South Korean hoping to meet his North Korean half-siblings
When Kang Min-do's family gathered for major traditional holidays, he said his North Korea-born father often wept quietly when he honored the two other children he lost during the chaos of the Korean War.
Kang, who was born to a woman his father remarried in South Korea, said his father told him bombings, likely from U.S. warplanes, scattered his family somewhere near Pyongyang in January 1951 as they were fleeing to South Korea.
'My father said he tried to search for them after the bombing ended, but bodies were piled so high and he just couldn't find anyone,' Kang, 67, said.
Before he died in 1992, Kang's father hoped that his son would find his half-siblings one day to tell them how much their father missed them. In a video message posted on a South Korean government website, Kang expressed hopes of visiting his father's grave with his half-brother and half-sister when the Koreas are united.
'I need to tell them how much our father struggled after coming to the South and how deeply he missed his older son and daughter,' Kang said.