World News Connection
SEOUL, Sept. 1 (Yonhap) -- Four former South Korean soldiers returned home last month, about half a century after being taken prisoner by North Koreans during the Korean War, a civic group said Thursday. The former POWs, including former Army second lieutenant, named Chang Seon-saeng, arrived in South Korea on Aug. 26 via China, where they stayed after fleeing the North, said Dong Hee-yun, an official at the Citizen's Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees.
The escapees, all in their late 70s, received medical treatment in a military hospital just outside Seoul shortly after coming to the South, Dong said.
Dong said his organization assisted in Chang's defection. "It is usual for North Korean defectors to come to the South after staying together at the South Korean Embassy in China," Dong said. "The other three men are believed to have fled the North separately."
Chang was taken captive in the closing weeks of the 1950-53 fratricidal war at age 26. In the North, he had worked in a coal mine and as a welder before crossing the Tuman River into China in July.
The South Korean authorities had mistakenly concluded Chang was killed during the war and placed a tombstone in the National Cemetery in Seoul for him.
Seoul says about 540 South Korean prisoners of war are still alive in the North, while Pyongyang denies holding any. A total of 52 South Korean POWs have defected from the North so far.