NK spurns letter by Souths man wanting his fathers return

North Korea refused Wednesday to accept a letter by a South Korean man demanding the return of his father who was aboard an airplane hijacked by the communist state in 1969, an official said.

Earlier this month, Hwang In-cheol, a 44-year-old local publisher, wrote a letter to the North Korean regime and asked the South Korean Unification Ministry to deliver it for him.

Hwang's father was among 11 South Koreans who did not make it back to their country after their airplane was hijacked by North Korean agents off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea claimed the South Koreans decided to stay in the North out of their desire to defect, even though the communist country repatriated 39 other passengers.

Unification Ministry spokesperson Lee Jong-joo said in a briefing Wednesday that her side tried to deliver Hwang's letter to the North earlier in the day, but the North refused to take it.

"We expressed our intention for delivering the letter, but the North's liaison officials said it was difficult for them to accept it," she said.

The two Koreas, whose dialogue has been almost entirely suspended since a conservative government took power in Seoul in 2008 with a tougher stance on Pyongyang, maintains a rudimentary level of contact through an inter-Korean industrial park in the North.

Divided by a heavily fortified border after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, the two countries do not allow their citizens to exchange mail or phone calls without approval.

Ministry officials had said they would look into ways to have Hwang's letter formally handed to the North. Hwang said in an interview earlier this month that he wrote the letter after he was inspired by news that the North had sent letters of four defectors' family members to urge them to return home.

Hwang believes his father is highly likely to be alive in the North. A South Korean intelligence official, whom Hwang declined to identify, gave him an indication in 1992 that his father was working in the broadcast media in the North.

"I dearly hope my letter will reach the North Korean government," he said.

Hwang is a member of a group that represents families whose loved ones did not return after the 1969 hijacking. South Korea believes over 3,800 of its nationals have been abducted by the North since the end of the Korean War. About 510 are still considered alive, the Unification Ministry said in a report last year.

Tens of thousands of people are believed to have defected from North Korea since the war. Of them, more than 20,000 have arrived in South Korea, mostly via China, fleeing poverty and suppression. (Yonhap)