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Re: Long-Term Korean POW Returns Home After 50 Years

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: December 25, 2003

"POW returns home after half a century

A former South Korean prisoner of war, who escaped from North Korea to China in June, arrived in Seoul yesterday, 40 days after Chinese authorities detained him for using a fake passport in a bid to seek asylum in South Korea.

It took half a century for Jeon Yong-il, 72, to return home as he was taken prisoner in North Korea in the final weeks of the 1950-53 Korean War, which left an estimated 40,000 South Korean POWs in the communist North.

The Seoul government made all-out efforts to bring the old soldier to South Korea after it was accused of procrastination in addressing Jeon's case, which drew media attention following a plea from civic activists working for North Korean defectors in mid-November.

"We have used various diplomatic channels to call on China to release him, and China finally agreed on it after simplifying its punishment concerning Jeon's charges of forging a passport," a Foreign Ministry official said.

Beijing has tried to keep a low profile on the issue of North Korean defectors in China so as not to harm relations with Pyongyang. Under a bilateral treaty, China is obliged to repatriate North Koreans escaping to China from the North.

"I have worked for South Korea for the last 50 years, and I will never forget this day," Jeon said upon arriving at Incheon International Airport from China in the afternoon.

Jeon, in good health, was then interrogated by agents of the National Intelligence Service about his odyssey.

After a period of government investigation, Jeon will visit his hometown of Yeongcheon in North Gyeongsang Province to be reunited with his family, including two sisters and one brother, whom he has not seen for half a century, Seoul officials said.

Jeon's family in the South believed him dead because the Defense Ministry notified them of his death in 1953, weeks before the signing of the armistice agreement. Some South Korean soldiers once believed to have died in the Korean War have been found alive in the North. The Defense Ministry estimates that about 500 South Korean POWs live in the North.

Jeon had reportedly labored in a coal mine in North Korea before escaping the country in June with his North Korean son. While hiding in China, Jeon's son was repatriated to North Korea in August.

Jeon knocked on the South Korean Embassy door in Beijing in September to identify himself as a POW and ask for a visa, but the embassy refused to help him on the grounds that the Defense Ministry in Seoul had failed to find his name on its list of living POWs in the North.

He then decided to leave for the South with a fake passport and was arrested as he tried to board a Seoul-bound flight at an airport outside Shanghai.

Jeon was soon transferred to a camp for North Korean defectors in the border town of Tumen, according to civic activists.

But he had a reversal of fortune after the Defense Ministry confirmed that he was one of the South Korean POWs detained by the North and the Foreign Ministry began attempts to rescue him.

(shj@heraldm.com)

By Seo Hyun-jin
©2001 ~ 2003 Herald Media INC."