 Hwang In-chul, whose father was abducted by a North Korean agent in a 1969 hijacking of a South Korean airliner, speaks to a forum in Seoul organized by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, Monday. / Korea Times |
For most, the 1969 hijacking of a South Korean airliner by an armed North Korean agent has faded into history. But for Hwang In-chul, whose father was a passenger, the incident still takes a heavy toll.
Thirty-nine of the passengers on the KAL YS-11 were eventually repatriated through Red Cross channels, with Pyongyang claiming the pilots themselves had redirected the flight. But seven others along with four crew members were abducted and never returned.
“I still dream of meeting my father,” said Hwang, representative of the 1969 Korean Air Abductee’s Family Committee, who was two years old at the time. “But there is a cold indifference in our society about this issue.”
The North has abducted 3,835 South Korean citizens since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, with over 500 of them believed to still remain there. Activists say emotional scars suffered by the kidnapped and their waiting families have gone largely unaccounted for.
A forum organized by local NGO Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) called Monday for the acts to be viewed as crimes against humanity, prioritized by the government and handled in concert with the international community.
“North Korea’s crimes against humanity have inflicted pain and anguish on thousands of innocent victims,” said Benjamin Yoon, NKHR chairman. “Family members...have been despairing year after year, uncertain as to whether their loved ones are alive or dead.”
Yoon said the relatives face financial hurdles as many of the abducted were breadwinners. Children whose parents remained in the North were stigmatized as their status was shown on school records.
During the fratricidal conflict, some 85,000 Southerners were taken north as prisoners and were not repatriated.
Experts on international law say the cases are international crimes because they were conducted on a widespread basis as well as systematically to allay shortages of laborers and intellectuals. Both conditions bolster the case for international action.
Post-war abductions, mostly involving fishermen working near the maritime border, are clear violations of the Geneva Conventions, the experts said.
Of such cases, some 3,300 have been repatriated, mostly after North-South negotiations under the pretext of families separated by the war. Pyongyang has never officially acknowledged the abductions.
Won Jae-chun, a professor of Law at Handong International Law School, said there remain untapped international mechanisms to deal with the problem, including the International Criminal Court. Action could also be taken under global covenants Pyongyang is party to, such as those on civil and political rights.
Participants in the forum stressed that the North’s abduction of other foreigners reinforces the case for international, rather than strictly inter-Korean, coordination. The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates Pyongyang has kidnapped over 180,000 citizens of 12 nations including the South.
An ‘obstacle to relations’
Activists and family members of the abducted say the government has taken the subject too lightly, treating it as an obstacle to volatile North-South dialogue, not a pressing humanitarian issue, in the face of Pyongyang’s denials.
In contrast, Tokyo in 2002 pushed North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to admit to the North’s abduction of Japanese citizens and continued to raise the issue.
In a landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000, the sides agreed to resolve humanitarian issues through exchange visits for separated families. While it mentioned only North Korean prisoners in the South, the move implied dealing with the abduction of Southerners.
Most family members of post-war abductees believe their relatives should not be linked to those separated by war.
Despite a number of legislative measures aiming to support them many insist the government has not done enough. Only in 2007 did the families begin receiving state “compensation and consolation” under a limited program that will end in October.
“The problem is being slowly forgotten amidst indifference,” said Ahn Jun-ho, a journalist who has conducted extensive research on the subject. He added that the problem was compounded by past liberal administrations with engagement policies toward Pyongyang.
Bilateral interactions over abductees are believed to have been limited during the Lee Myung-bak administration, given chilly relations over Lee’s strict aid-for-denuclearization policy and two deadly attacks by the North last year.
Oh Chung-suk, section chief at the Ministry of Unification dealing with separated families, expressed condolences to the families and acknowledged the government “had not done much” on the issue.
The official said the administration had made steady efforts but that a fundamental change in the North’s stance would be the only way to solve the problem. After a rare reunion of separated families, last October, he said Seoul offered a “monetary amount" that could be exchanged for each abductee. That effort ended after Pyongyang’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island a month later.
Oh hinted that Seoul could leverage the provision of future food aid in trying to resolve the problem.
Hwang, the representative for those abducted on the KAL flight, maintained his passionate call for action.
“This issue should have been resolved 40 years ago. But one year, 10 years, 20 years and now 40 years have passed. It is long overdue,” he said, banging his fist on the table.
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