Jon Dunbar is a copy editor at The Korea Times, as well as editor of the Foreign Community page and curator of the Korea Times Archive. If you have suggestions for possible articles, or wish to contribute articles yourself, contact jdunbar@koreatimes.co.kr.
TNKR hosts fundraiser for S. Korean abducted to North 50 years ago
Teach North Korean Refugees (TNKR) holds an event last Dec. 16 to mark the 49th anniversary of Hwang Won's abduction to North Korea. / Courtesy of Bring My Father Home Campaign
By Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
Half a century ago, on Dec. 11, 1969, Hwang Won, 32, a program director at MBC, boarded Korean Air flight YS-11 at Gangneung Airbase in Gangwon Province, bound for Seoul's Gimpo Airport. But the flight never landed in Seoul. A North Korean agent aboard hijacked the plane to North Korea, and its four crew members and 46 passengers became captives of the North. Sixty-six days later, 39 passengers were returned to South Korea, but Hwang was not among them. North Korea kept the plane, its crew and passengers.
Hwang In-cheol was only 26 months old when his father vanished behind the DMZ. All he has to remember his father is a single black-and-white photograph. His mother used to tell him his father was away on business in the U.S., rather than reveal the uncomfortable truth. He only found out the truth at age 9 from his uncle.
He founded the Korean Air Flight YS-11 Families Committee in 2008 seeking to lobby the South Korean government to action to bring his father, whom he had barely known as an infant, home.
This Saturday, the
Global Education Center (TNKR) hosts a fundraiser at the
, near Noksapyeong Station on Seoul Metro Line 6. It will include a speech by Hwang, possibly live music, and a raffle.
Hwang In-cheol holds a sign calling for a legislative answer to the 1969 abduction of his father, Hwang Won, and a picture of his father holding him as an infant in this photo, uploaded last Nov. 16. / Courtesy of Bring My Father Home Campaign
“This year marks the 50th anniversary, which means this is sure to be the last time the media and the international community pay attention to this case,” organizers said in the event write-up.
Funds are being raised to send Hwang to Geneva, Switzerland, in March to appeal to the U.N. Human Rights Council. A petition will be circulated this Saturday urging governments there to address the elder Hwang's case during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on North Korea held in May.
He previously applied in 2010 to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances of the U.N. Human Rights Council's Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to investigate the status of the unreturned passengers. And in 2012 he filed a lawsuit with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office against the North Korean hijacker. Last year, he sent a request to the U.N. calling on the North Korean government to provide full information on the fate and whereabouts of his father and the other abductees.
“By filing the lawsuit, Mr. Hwang sought to raise awareness about his father's abduction, hoping it would spur the South Korean government into action,” Kwon Young-min, project manager of the
, said in an interview. “Unfortunately, it did not create the national solidarity Mr. Hwang had hoped for, and the government simply dismissed his lawsuit citing statute of limitations.”
It is believed his father is still alive, according to an unverifiable source as of March 2016.
The event lasts from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Suggested donation is 5,000 won. Email
for more information.