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By Lim Chang Won, Agence
France-Presse
SEOUL: A South Korean who lost
his fisherman father to North Korean kidnappers 41 years ago is
waging a difficult and sometimes dangerous campaign to rescue
hundreds more abductees from the hardline communist state.
Apart from the families
themselves, the abductees’ plight was largely a forgotten issue
until Choi Sung Yong started working in 1992 to bring them home.
By official count 485 South
Koreans, mostly fishermen, were seized in the Cold War decades
following the 1950 to 1953 Korean conflict and more than 500
prisoners of war (POWs) were never sent home in 1953.
But unlike Japan which secured
the official release of some of its own abductees, South Korea has
been reluctant to make a major issue of the kidnappings.
North Korea denies holding any
South Koreans against their will and describes them as defectors,
even though some have managed to escape and come South.
Six abductees and more than 10
POWs were rescued by Choi and a network of messengers he developed
in the North.
Choi told AFP his campaign began
when his mother pushed him to bring back his father who was seized
while fishing.
He runs his campaign from a
cramped office in southern Seoul provided by the state-run National
Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives, for whom he previously worked.
Its walls are plastered with
pictures of abductees and their families.
“For both South and North
Korea, this has been an embarrassing issue,” Choi said. The North
in the past snatched South Koreans to train them as spies or to use
them for political propaganda, he said.
“That’s why North Korea
cannot acknowledge an outright crime such as kidnapping. They are
treated as defectors.”
Choi, 55, almost gave up his
rescue work seven years ago when he learned that his father had been
executed in North Korea. But his mother encouraged him to carry on.
“My mother, who died in 2006,
asked me to bury her ashes together with the remains of my father. I
keep this as her last wish,” he said.
His mother, a fishmonger, was
once the main donor for his campaign. Now his work is supported by
his shopkeeper wife and by abductees’ families.
Choi says North Korean agents
tried to kidnap him in China in October 2005. Since then he has had
full-time police protection.
“It has been a dangerous and
difficult job. But I’m proud to play a role in drawing attention
to the plight of abductees and their families,” he said.
Choi described the rescue of Choe
Uk Il, a fisherman who arrived in Seoul in early 2007, as his most
difficult mission. Choe and 32 other shipmates had been captured by
a North Korean navy boat in 1975.
“Three of my people who
contacted Choe are believed to have been executed by North Korean
authorities,” Choi said.
Choi first sent messengers to
Choe after Choe managed to smuggle a letter to his brother in South
Korea in 1997.
But Choe, now 68, was worried
about a set-up by the authorities. He reported some messengers to
police, fearing they were agents of the regime.
“I had been under the constant
surveillance of North Korea’s security agency,” Choe told AFP in
a telephone interview.
He said it was only in December
2006 that he decided to escape, when a ninth messenger brought a
letter listing the birthdays of his South Korean children.
Choe, who married a North Korean
widow with two children, said he had been forced to live as a farmer
while in the communist state. “The life of abductees in North
Korea is miserable,” he said.
Choi gives few details of his
rescues, which involve arranging border crossings and covertly
moving escapees from hideouts in China to South Korean diplomatic
missions. If caught in China, fugitives face repatriation and harsh
punishment—possibly even a death sentence.
With the installation of a
conservative government in Seoul in February, he and the families of
victims are hopeful of a government-to-government settlement on
abductees and POWs.
New President Lee Myung Bak has
pledged to take a firmer line with Pyongyang and to push the regime
on its human rights record.
“This is a pressing issue given
their advanced age,” Choi said.
“There should be no more
back-room deals. Our government must show its strong will to solve
this issue by pressing North Korea to accept it as an official
agenda item at inter-Korean talks.”
At a summit in October
then-president Roh Moo-Hyun urged North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to
help resolve the issue, according to his spokesman at the time. But
he only confirmed “a wide gap in perception,” the spokesman
said.
Analysts say repatriating
abductees officially will be a tough task.
“This issue will not be solved
anytime soon as many of them settled there after marrying North
Korean women,” said Koh Yu-Hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk
University.
“Furthermore North Korea will
never admit the existence of South Korean abductees.”
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