After the Korean War armistice in 1953, Kim Myeong-bok and 75 other North Korean prisoners of war (POW) detained in South Korea opted to live abroad rather than risk hostile welcomes in either half of their homeland. Now Kim wants to come home, though he might find little more than rejection and suspicion.
Amid the Koreas’ intense Cold War rivalry, they were labeled traitors, opportunists or fence-sitters. The fates of several North Korean POWs who voluntarily returned home are unknown. Many others have died abroad and now less than a dozen are believed to be alive.
Kim, 79 years old and living in Brazil, is trying to return to his North Korean hometown, at the arrangement of a movie director, who is making a documentary on him and his fellow POWs.
Photo: AP
He does not have North Korea’s approval yet and might never get it, though he will at least visit the South. He knows this is probably his last chance to try to go home.
“I’ve missed my parents a lot, particularly my mother, who took me to a church and told me to believe in Jesus Christ,” Kim said, speaking from the remote Brazilian city of Cuiaba during a recent video interview.
BITTERLY DIVIDED
Kim and most of the other POWs who left the Korean Peninsula settled in South America. None could have expected that their homeland would remain so bitterly divided for so long. With an armistice signed, but not a peace treaty, the peninsula remains technically at war, with combat troops still facing each other along earth’s most heavily fortified border.
The POWs left for many reasons, including to avoid the North’s harsh systems, to enjoy religious freedom and to build up professional careers. Many feared execution in the North for having been held captive in the South.
Many believed their family members must have died during the chaos of the three-year war, which killed millions. They chose not to stay on in the South because they worried about living with the label of former North Korean soldiers in a nation where they had no relatives or friends.
“We are not against North Korea, but the situation was very critical and miserable, so we left Korea and went to other countries. We are so anxious to meet our relatives,” said an 86-year-old ex-POW now living in San Francisco.
He asked to be identified only by his initials — H.T. — out of concern for any living relatives he might have in the North.
SEVERE POVERTY
Kim said he surrendered himself to South Korea’s military only a month-and-a-half after being conscripted into the North’s People’s Army in 1950. He said he did not want to return to the North, where authorities suppressed Christians and severe poverty forced his family to eat porridge made of soybean residue three times a day.
During and after the war, the US-led UN forces repatriated more than 83,000 Chinese and North Korean POWs, while the North turned back more than 13,000 South Korean and UN troops. Tens of thousands of others stayed in the nations they once fought against; North and South Korea accuse each other of keeping at least some of the POWs against their will.
In 1954, 76 North Korean and 12 Chinese soldiers who chose third nations were first sent to India before being moved to nations where they hoped to resettle. Some wished to live in the US, but under an agreement among the UN command, North Korea and China, they were allowed to go only to nations that had been neutral in the war.
After more than two years of being stranded in India, about 60 ex-North Korean soldiers were eventually able to move to Brazil and Argentina. H.T. moved to the US years after settling in Brazil. About 10 others returned to either North or South Korea while the rest remained in India, according to a 2001 research paper by analyst Cho Sung-hun at the South Korean state-run Institute for Military History.
The fate of those who returned to the North remains unknown. Many ex-POWs believe unconfirmed past media reports that they were executed, but Cho said they could have been used as propaganda tools instead.
Kim arrived in Brazil in 1956 and became a farmer, mostly in the western state of Mato Grosso, where Cuiaba is located. Many ex-POWs struggled to get along with other Korean immigrants, mostly from South Korea, who only regarded them as just ex-communist soldiers, according to Cho Kyeong-duk, a movie director who is making a documentary about the ex-POWs’ possible return.
“They went to neutral countries or third countries, but it was ironic that they couldn’t walk a step away from the ideological confrontation,” Cho Kyeong-duk said.
GRADUALLY FORGOTTEN
Former POWs have been gradually forgotten in South Korea, but many who recall their stories now view them as victims of the war and the ensuing Korean division.
“They are the ones who have been standing on the boundary without belonging to either side,” said Chang Yong-seok, an analyst at Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies.
Time is running out for any potential reunions. Ten of the 21 POWs Cho Kyeong-duk has interviewed since beginning his project in 2009 are dead. He believes the remaining 11 are the last former North Korean POWs sent to third nations: six in Brazil, two each in Argentina and the US, and one in India.
Under the itinerary of the movie tentatively titled Return Home, Cho Kyeong-duk’s crew is to join Kim as he meets other POWs in Brazil and Argentina, and flies to India before going to South Korea on about June 25, the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. Cho Kyeong-duk said Kim is the only one who has so far agreed to travel with him while others remained undecided.
In South Korea, Kim is to visit the site of his POW camp on the southern Geoje Island and the border village of Panmunjom, where the armistice was signed.
Cho Kyeong-duk and Kim have met North and South Korean diplomats in Brazil several times, but have not been given approval from either government. The director said his conversations with diplomats suggest that the North does not want them to visit the South and vice versa, but he insists on stops in both nations.
‘UNCHANGED’
“More than 60 years have passed, but things remain unchanged,” Cho Kyeong-duk said.
In answers to questions about Cho Kyeong-duk and Kim’s travel plans, UN command spokesman Frederick Agee said it only considers for approval border crossing requests that are officially presented by both Koreas. The command and North Korea jointly oversee the 4km-wide Demilitarized Zone that bisects the peninsula.
Seoul’s Ministry of Unification said it determines whether to endorse a South Korean’s request to visit the North after reviewing overall ties with Pyongyang and other factors.
Kim hopes he is allowed to cross the border through Panmunjom and travel to his hometown of Ryongchon on the North’s northwestern tip. He assumes his parents are dead, but wants to visit their graves, along with the site of the church that he presumes was destroyed.
“My Brazil pastor told me North Korea is a dangerous country to go, but I still want to go there, even if I run into some troubles,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese