ByÊJong-Heon Lee
UPI Correspondent
SEOULÊ--ÊChang Sun-saeng, a 78-year-old South Korean prisoner of war, began an arduous and dangerous journey to his homeland in 2002 after fleeing North Korea where he was detained for five decades.
Risking his life, Chang crossed the border, patrolled by heavily armed guards, and sneaked into China to make his way to Seoul.
But he was caught by Chinese security police and repatriated to the North. China, an ideological ally of North Korea, does not recognize North Korean escapees as refugees and is obligated to repatriate them under a treaty.
The ailing POW again crossed the border into China on June 14, helped by his son. Barely escaping the North Korean security agency, he successfully reached the South Korean diplomatic office in Shenyang, a city north of Beijing, on July 7 with the help of South Korean human rights activists in China. Chang, and three other POWs who were in the South Korean Embassy in China, arrived in Seoul last week, according to Seoul officials.
Ê"I hope to lead a life worthy of man here in my fatherland," Chang was quoted as saying by his younger brother, Chang Sun-gwang.
The former POW was suffering from poor health and acute malnutrition, said the younger Chang who had believed his older brother to have been killed in action during the 1950-53 Korean War. His name is on the tablet for the war dead at the National Cemetery. Military documents say he was killed during the war.
Chang said he was caught by the Chinese army who fought alongside with the North during a battle in Kimhwa, just south of the border, on July 15, 1953, shortly before the conclusion of the Korean armistice that technically ended the armed conflict.
He was sent to a coal mine in the North's mountainous northeastern area where he stayed for 30 years. Later, Chang worked as a welder in a labor camp near the coal mine before he crossed the Tuman River into China.
Chang's return came as the human rights problems in North Korea are getting fresh attention after U.S. President George W. Bush met Kang Chol-hwan, a North Korean gulag escapee, at the White House in June.
The South Korean government, which has long been accused of keeping a low profile on the issue of POWs for fear of creating friction with the Pyongyang regime, has recently called for North Korea to repatriate South Koreans POWs.
During inter-Korean Red Cross talks last month, North Korea agreed to locate the whereabouts of South Koreans soldiers listed as missing in action during the Korean War, in an apparent response to Seoul's massive economic aid.
South Korea also proposed supplying 2 million kilowatts of electricity to energy-starved North Korea as early as 2008 if Pyongyang promises to gives up its nuclear development programs.
In another reconciliatory gesture, Pyongyang allowed the South to build a family-reunion center at the North's mountain resort. The groundbreaking ceremony for a 13-story building was held at the Mount Kumgang resort, just north of the border. When completed in April 2007, the building will be used as a permanent base for unions of hundreds of thousands of families separated by the war.
But North Korea rejected Seoul's call for identifying South Koreans allegedly kidnapped by North Korean agents after the end of the Korean War.
Human rights activists in Seoul have called for the government to make greater efforts to resolve the issue of POWs and other South Koreans detained in the North. Seoul is still concerned that North Korea may use Seoul's attempt to raise the human right issue as an excuse to slow down the fragile inter-Korean reconciliation process.
According to Cho Chang-ho, who in 1994 became the first South Korean POW to escape into the South, the Geneva conventions that provide certain rights to prisoners of war did not apply to the South Korean POWs detained in the North.
They were denied repatriation to the South even when the two Koreas conducted a POW-exchange program at the end of the war.
"This was because they had been labeled as 'reactionaries' due to their attempts to escape to the South," Cho said in his autobiography, "A Dead Man Comes Home."
Six months after the North invaded the South in June 1950, the state-run Radio Pyongyang trumpeted that the North Korean army captured more than 65,000 South Koreans as prisoners of war. But it repatriated only 7,142 on the signing of the Korean Armistice.
Seoul's Defense Ministry says some 19,000 South Korean soldiers were listed as missing in action during the war. The ministry estimates there's a total of 1,186 South Korean POWs in the North and 542 of them are still stranded there. Pyongyang insists no South Koreans are held in the North against their will.
© 2005 News World Communications Inc.