News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: North & South Korean POWs

Date: August 28, 2000

Koreas Eye Return of POWs, Abductees

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The return of hundreds of South Koreans believed to be living in North Korea against their will is among topics to be discussed during high-level talks in Pyongyang this week, officials said Monday.

A five-member government delegation led by Unification Minister Park Jae-kyu was to leave for Pyongyang Tuesday for three days of talks.

Seoul officials say tens of thousands of South Korean prisoners of war never returned home after the 1950-1953 Korean War. Citing defectors, they say about 300 of them are still believed held in the North.

The Seoul government also says North Korea has abducted 3,756 South Koreans since the end of the war. All but 454 of them - mostly fishermen - were sent back to the South.

Pyongyang denies the allegations, calling them part of a smear campaign.

The Pyongyang talks are a continuation of the July 29-31 meetings in Seoul. They are to discuss implementation of agreements made at a historic inter-Korean summit in June, when the leaders of the two Koreas pledged to seek the eventual reunification of the divided peninsula.

The Koreas were divided into the communist North and the pro-Western South at the end of World War II in 1945. The Korean War ended with an armistice - not a peace treaty - and their border remains the world's most heavily fortified.