'I want my father back'
Signe Poulsen, representative of the United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks during The Korea Times Roundtable discussion on South Koreans kidnapped by North Korea at its conference room, Aug. 11. Together clockwise from left are Hwang In-cheol, the son of a television program director on board a KA: flight hijacked by a North Korean agent in 1969; Casey Lartigue, leader of the Teach North Korean Refugees (KNTR), a nongovernmental organization; Oh Young-jin, the Times’ chief editorial writer who hosted the round; Poulsen; translator and Choi Sung-yong, representative of the Abductees’ Family Union. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
By Oh Young-jin
Hwang In-cheol speaks about his wish for the United Nations to arrange for a reunion in a third country with his father who was abducted by North Korea in 1969.
Hwang In-cheol doesn’t remember what his father looked like.
After all, Hwang was only a two-year-old toddler when an airplane his father, Hwang Won, a television program director, was on board was hijacked by a North Korean agent. That was 47 years ago on Dec. 11, 1969.
However much time may pass, some wounds never heal. For Hwang, that wound is his father.
The bizarreness involved in his father’s abduction makes the situation even more painful for him. The senior Hwang was not supposed to take that fateful flight ― it was a last-minute call from his boss, who asked him to take his place.
“Here it is,” the junior Hwang said, showing a copy from historical records from MBC, the broadcasting firm he worked for. He indicated the underlined part about the boss’s recollections. That piece of paper was all there was that showed him his father’s fate, indicative of how materially tenuous his links with him are.
But his will to see him again couldn’t be stronger because it was one of the few things he could have to continue his struggle ― not being sure whether his father was alive or not. The last time he was told his father was alive was early this year through a source. Even if he were alive, at age 80, the health of his father could change from day to day.
With the uncertainty and anxiety, his personal conviction helped him to stage a one-man demonstration on and off for six years since 2010. Before that, it went further nine years to 2001 during the inter-Korean family reunions.
Among those participating was a former flight attendant, one of the 11 kept by the North out of the 50 passengers and crewmembers on the fateful flight KAL NAMC YS-11, meeting with her family members. Hwang started his fight to get his father back more earnestly.
Then, any help would be a big help to him.
“Seven people joined me when I held my recent one-man rally in Imjingak,” he said with a laugh. “My rally got 700 percent stronger.” Imjingak is located close to the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where North Korean defectors and those who fled southward during the Korean War pay respects to their ancestors during traditional holidays.
That sounded as words of encouragement that he himself needed most.
“Nobody told me about my father when I was young,” he remembered. His mother kept telling the inquisitive son that his father was on a business trip to the United States.
He passed many Christmases and birthdays without his father coming home as his mother promised. He blamed his mother for lying and his father for not loving him.
Then, his uncle took him aside when he was about 10 years old and explained what happened to his father. He immediately understood his father wouldn’t come soon; but that revelation caused him more trouble. At that time, the anti-communist mood was high as the two Koreas’ ideological war hit its highest note. “Teachers and classmates didn’t distinguish between defection and abduction.”
In the ideologically charged atmosphere, the two were as different as night and day ― defection being an act of treason and abduction being short of that. The groupthink went that families with kidnapped relatives could be controlled by the North.
“People still wonder whether my father was aboard a KAL flight that was blown up by North Korean agents in 1987,” he said regarding the lack of understanding of his problem.
When spoken, Hwang’s trials, however, make the listener feel sorry about being ignorant of another human being’s tragedy, a feeling that Koreans would feel even deeper out of commiseration, and then become resentful about the failure for the government to settle the issue. Could the nation that can’t take care of one of its people demand that they be patriotic?
He was a victim of politics. Changes of government from liberal and conservative have affected Hwang’s struggle little ― liberals wanted to pigeonhole this kind of issue for better ties with the North, while conservatives cited other priorities.
He was once close to a reunion of an unofficial kind in 2013, but that was thwarted by the Feb. 12, 2013 third North Korean nuclear test.
The United Nations has not helped much. The International Committee of Red Cross tried to press the North to allow the objective verification of the senior Hwang’s free will about staying in the North. Pyongyang rejected such requests in violation of its own obligations.
The U.N. also is mired in its own bureaucracy as it classifies Hwang’s issue as an enforced disappearance. “It’s not a forced disappearance. It’s an apparent act of kidnapping with the perpetrator being North Korea,” he said.”The U.N. needs to process my father’s issue according to the pertinent procedures and make possible our reunion in a third country at least.”
“I want my father back,” he said.
This interview was based on The Korea Times Roundtable discussion in the Times’ conference room, Aug. 11. A follow-up telephone interview was conducted Wednesday. The writer is The Korea Times’ chief editorial writer who hosted the event.