A South Korean fisherman has escaped from North Korea after being kidnapped more than three decades ago and is waiting in China to return to his homeland, an activist said yesterday.
Yoon Jong-soo and 32 other shipmates were captured by a North Korean navy boat while fishing off the South’s east coast on Aug. 8, 1975.
Now aged 66, he is in a South Korean consulate awaiting a ticket to Seoul, said Choi Sung-yong, who heads an association that seeks to rescue abductees and represents their families.
By official counts, 485 South Koreans, mostly fishermen, were seized in the Cold War decades after the 1950 to 1953 Korean conflict and more than 500 prisoners of war were never sent home in 1953.
Yoon was one of those officially listed as having been abducted.
North Korea denies holding any South Koreans against their will even though some have managed to escape and come south.
Choi did not elaborate on Yoon’s rescue, which involved arranging border crossings. If caught in China, refugees from North Korea face repatriation and harsh punishment — possibly even a death sentence.
In an interview published yesterday by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, Yoon said he and his wife left their home in the North on May 1.
They left their 25-year-old daughter behind for security reasons.
But the wife had a change of heart because of concerns about her daughter when she reached the border on May 4, Yoon said.
He said he had crossed the border river alone and entered the South Korean consulate in the city of Shenyang on May 20.
Yoon said he had been forced to live as a farming machine manager in Kaechon, 70km north of Pyongyang since he was kidnapped.
“Please help my wife and daughter who are just like a doomed fish placed on the dresser,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “They can be punished any time.”
Yoon is the eighth fisherman to have escaped North Korea. Six of them were rescued by Choi.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has pledged to take a firmer line with Pyongyang and to push the regime on its human rights record.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS