By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
A civic group Thursday urged the government to request that North Korea return abductees from an aircraft hijacked in 1969 in Gangneung, Gangwon Province. It has been 39 years since the tragedy, but there are still 11 people being held hostage, and the remaining families here called for public attention to the case, which has broken hundreds of people's hearts.
On Dec. 11 at 12:25 p.m., Korean Air YS-11 flying from Gangneung to Gimpo, and carrying 47 passengers and four crew, changed course in the sky near the Daegwallyeong mountains and crossed the border to the North.
The intelligence agency announced the next day that North Korean spy Cho Chang-hee hijacked the plane but the North said the pilot, Yu Byeong-ha, voluntarily defected to the North.
The government sought international help and with the United Nations and the Red Cross' mediation, 39 of the kidnapping victims were returned on Feb. 14, 1970. The returnees testified that Cho threatened the pilot with a rifle and turned the plane to the North. They said they were brainwashed to become North Korean sympathizers and those who resisted were tortured with drugs and electricity.
However, Pyongyang has kept 11 ㅡ crew, MBC television directors, a local hospital owner, businessmen and others ㅡ to this day. Among them, Seong Gyeong-hee, a flight attendant aged 23 at the time of abduction, met her mother during a family reunion meeting in 2001 in Pyongyang that brought national outpouring.
A group of the remaining families in the South called for the government to take more concrete steps for the return of the remaining abductees. ``The news is now being forgotten among people and we are devastated that we may never see them again. We urge the government and our allies to ask the North to let us meet our beloved ones again,'' the families said in a statement Thursday at the Press Center in downtown Seoul.