Seoul Intensifies Efforts to Bring POWs Back Home
The Defense Ministry is trying to determine the exact number of Korean soldiers taken to North Korea as prisoners of war right before the armistice on July 27, 1953, as part of efforts to bring survivors home. A ministry official said Friday the government is considering bringing back first POWs who were not included in the repatriation list at the time of the armistice agreement. They were captured between July 1951, when negotiations started, and July 1953, when the truce was concluded.
The ministry said when negotiations to repatriate POWs between the South and North started in 1951, UN Command estimated the number of South Korean soldiers missing in action at more than 82,000, but only 8,343 were actually returned home. In a report submitted to the National Assembly last year, it said that as of September last year, 546 South Korean POWs believed alive in the North, 845 deceased and 260 missing. Some 60 POWs have escaped the North to return to the South, and 60 percent of them had been captured right before the truce was finalized in 1953.
Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok told a Uri Party policy meeting that POWs can be classified into two groups those who were captured during the Korean War in 1950 and forced to serve in the North Korean Army and those captured right before the truce. He said the ministry is working to bring the latter group back first.
(c) 2004 The Chosun Ilbo