Dead Korean soldiers found alive after 50 years
A group of South Korean soldiers thought to have died during the 1950-53 war between North and South Korea showed up at a family reunion last weekend, reported the Seoul Ministry of Defence.
The four men, recorded as “dead” in the list of casualties during the Korean War, met with their families in South Korea after more than 50 years of separation. The families of the soldiers were informed about their relatives only a few days before the meeting took place.
The South Korean authorities said they will now revise the list of people killed during the three-years conflict – a list including thousands of “dead” or disappeared. Some of them, it appears, like these four, might actually be still alive, somewhere in the North Korean territory.
A spokesperson of the Seoul's ministry of defence told the Daily Telegraph: “We are discussing whether to leave [the four soldiers] on the war dead list or name them as prisoners of war by consulting with their families and the ministry of veterans' affairs.”
Officially recognising these four men as being alive may affect the war benefits and pensions that their relatives have been receiving since the war. For this reason, the government said it is dealing “very cautiously” with the issue.
This is the latest episode of the 50-years legacy of a murky and, in many aspects, still mysterious conflict that went on between the two Asian countries during the polarised years of the Korean War.
Although North Korea denies it, the South Korean ministry of defence estimates that up to 500 prisoners of war were never released when the war ended in 1953, and are still living – or being kept – in the North.
According to South Korea, almost 500 civilians have been abducted to the North in the years following the war.
The Korean War was fought by what was then known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, supported by China and the Soviet Union, and the Republic of Korea, backed by the UN with the United States in the front line.
Although the fighting ended with a ceasefire after three years, no peace treaty was ever signed between the two countries – which are still technically at war. The scale of fighting during the conflict was high and brutal. In the areas occupied by North Korea, thousands of selected killings were carried out by the Northern army; targeting academics, people in local government, religious guides, and any other element considered likely to lead a resistance force.
Similar actions were also committed by the South Korean army against pro-Northern and communist political prisoners. Gregory Henderson, a US diplomat who was in Korea during the conflict, estimated that some 100,000 prisoners were killed by the Southern army, both before and during the war.
Since the end of combat, the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been investigating the killings and disappearances of civilians in times of war, with figures as high as hundreds of thousands of cases of civilians killed.
(Read the full article on The Fresh Outlook)
Dec 2010
The four men, recorded as “dead” in the list of casualties during the Korean War, met with their families in South Korea after more than 50 years of separation. The families of the soldiers were informed about their relatives only a few days before the meeting took place.
The South Korean authorities said they will now revise the list of people killed during the three-years conflict – a list including thousands of “dead” or disappeared. Some of them, it appears, like these four, might actually be still alive, somewhere in the North Korean territory.
A spokesperson of the Seoul's ministry of defence told the Daily Telegraph: “We are discussing whether to leave [the four soldiers] on the war dead list or name them as prisoners of war by consulting with their families and the ministry of veterans' affairs.”
Officially recognising these four men as being alive may affect the war benefits and pensions that their relatives have been receiving since the war. For this reason, the government said it is dealing “very cautiously” with the issue.
This is the latest episode of the 50-years legacy of a murky and, in many aspects, still mysterious conflict that went on between the two Asian countries during the polarised years of the Korean War.
Although North Korea denies it, the South Korean ministry of defence estimates that up to 500 prisoners of war were never released when the war ended in 1953, and are still living – or being kept – in the North.
According to South Korea, almost 500 civilians have been abducted to the North in the years following the war.
The Korean War was fought by what was then known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, supported by China and the Soviet Union, and the Republic of Korea, backed by the UN with the United States in the front line.
Although the fighting ended with a ceasefire after three years, no peace treaty was ever signed between the two countries – which are still technically at war. The scale of fighting during the conflict was high and brutal. In the areas occupied by North Korea, thousands of selected killings were carried out by the Northern army; targeting academics, people in local government, religious guides, and any other element considered likely to lead a resistance force.
Similar actions were also committed by the South Korean army against pro-Northern and communist political prisoners. Gregory Henderson, a US diplomat who was in Korea during the conflict, estimated that some 100,000 prisoners were killed by the Southern army, both before and during the war.
Since the end of combat, the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been investigating the killings and disappearances of civilians in times of war, with figures as high as hundreds of thousands of cases of civilians killed.
(Read the full article on The Fresh Outlook)
Dec 2010