News-Info-Alerts

Re: Ex-POW's Ordeal to End Shortly

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: December 22, 2003

"Ex-South Korean Prisoner of War's Ordeal to End Shortly

By Kim Hyung-jin

SEOUL, Dec. 22 (Yonhap) -- Half a century after he was taken prisoner by North Koreans during the Korean War, Jeon Yong-il, a former South Korean army private now under detention in China sees his Odyssey coming to a happy end.

The 72-year-old Jeon was arrested by Chinese authorities two months ago as he tried to board a Seoul-bound flight at an airport outside Shanghai with a forged passport.

After the South Korean government intervened, China has recently agreed to let him fly to Seoul, South Korean officials said over the weekend. He is expected to be allowed to come here in January, they said.

Jeon's ordeal highlighted not only his personal hardship but also the stark reality being faced by the two Koreas and China. China fought on North Korea's side in the 1950-53 Korean War.

But China, which established diplomatic relations with Seoul, has become reasonably pragmatic in its policy toward South Korea. They are now major economic partners with two-way trade expected to reach US$57 billion this year.

Jeon was taken prisoner in the closing weeks of the Korean War at age 21. After subsisting in the North, he smuggled himself into China in May, hoping for a trip to his long-missed homeland.

Jeon first sought help from the South Korean Embassy in Beijing which checked with its home government about his status. The embassy refused to help him after being told by the Defense Ministry that he was killed in action.

With nowhere to turn for help, Jeon forged a passport and tried to board a Seoul-bound flight, posing as an ethnic Chinese citizen. He was hauled away by Chinese investigators.

The Seoul government drew sharp media and public flak after the Defense Ministry was found to have bungled in checking Jeon's records. Ministry officials later found him to be listed as missing in separate records.

But the Defense Ministry tried to cover up its initial failure to identify Jeon. It was later found that the ministry and the National Intelligence Service had been aware of Jeon's wish to come to Seoul through informal channels. The two agencies had failed to identify him at that time.

¡°Out of concern that their (initial) mistake would create a stir, they were in a hurry to cover it up in the official identification process," a Defense Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

With so many North Korean refugees arriving in South Korea via China these days, the escape of one more North Korean can hardly be big news in the South.

But Jeon's case created big splashes in South Korean media.

"Because of the government¡¯s negligence, our national and victim of the war faced a critical moment to be sent back to North Korea where torture or even execution awaits him," lamented Lee Sang-hoon, a former defense minister who now heads the Korean Veterans Association.

Lee urged the government to make concerted efforts to bring back more than 1,000 South Korean prisoners in North Korea, many of them are believed to be still alive.

China has a treaty with North Korea to return any border trespassers but it has not done so in cases which have drawn international attention. Analysts say that China is more mindful of international attention ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

China is also trying to project itself as a big mediator at an international forum aimed at defusing tension over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. It successfully arranged the first multilateral meeting with North Korea, in which South Korea was an active participant.

Jeon's ordeal has often been compared in South Korea with strenuous North Korean efforts to rescue spies it had sent to the South in the past.

In a deal linked to the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, South Korea allowed 63 former North Korean spies to go home. The ex-communist spies were free after serving long prison terms but could not leave the country without government approval.

The former spies, some of them in wheelchairs and on stretchers, received a hero's welcome when they crossed the border. Thousands of North Koreans with flowers showed up, and the country's television carried it live.

"These extreme comparison infuriates and suffocate us," said JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in a commentary. "It is obvious that which country's army will be more patriotic and loyal to their nation and people."

Jeon¡¯s plight was made public not by the government but by a civic activist.

"I heard about Jeon shortly after he arrived in China. But I did not want to implicate myself in the case, until Jeon was caught by Chinese authorities,"said Choi Sung-ryong, head of an association of families of people kidnapped by North Korea.

He criticized politicians, not to mention government officials.

"Every single day, lawmakers and politicians clash over tens of billions of won they illegally collected from businesses during last year's presidential election. Lawmakers, representative of the public, rarely talked about how to bring back our national hero,¡" he said.

Campaign fund scandals are one of the top news in South Korea now. Politicians are preoccupied with the scandals ahead of upcoming general elections in April.

According to official data, 1,186 South Korean prisoners of war are still alive in North Korea, of whom 32 have managed to flee to Seoul since 1994.

But the issue is an extremely sensitive topic to be discussed at official inter-Korean channels. North Korea, which insists that it holds no South Korean war prisoners, threatened to boycott talks during which the issue was raised.

"The scope of our government's actions is limited, as the North might view raising such an issue as an attempt to interfere in its domestic affairs," said Paik Hak-soon, a senior researcher at the private Sejong Institute.

hyungjin@yna.co.kr "