Korean War - 7 U.S. and British War Prisoners are Under Arrest

Korean War - 7 U.S. and British War Prisoners are Under Arrest. October. 23, 2003 22:47. maypole@donga.com hanscho@donga.com.

On October 22, a North Korean asylum seeker, Kim Yong (53), a former executive of the North Korea Integrity Department, insisted that there are westerners held captive from the Korean War along with a Japanese woman in the North Korea political prisoner camp.

Kim, who escaped the Pyungannam-do Geachun-gun political prisoner camp of the 18th Government Office in September of 1998 and who has also defected to Korea through Mongolia and China in October of 1999, reported the Korean War captives in a press conference, prepared by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, to the national press club in Washington, United States.

“I saw seven westerners in 1996 when I went for a street-widening construction, where a work foreman said they were known as the U.S. and British army prisoners who had been captivated in Jangjin lake side Hangyungnam-do during the Korean War,” Kim said.

“A Japanese woman around 55-60 years old was under arrest when I was in the Pyungannam-do Geachun-gun 14th Government Office. She was from Hiroshima and her name was Yoshimura,” Kim testified.

Kim was under arrest in the political prisoner camp when he was discovered to have manipulated documents, such as the birth secret in 1993 when he working for the North Korea Integrity Department as vice-president for the West Sea Ashahi Trading Company, which exported fishes to Japan to acquire dollars, in order to conceal the past.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s Red Cross faxed to Japan’s Red Cross and criticized that it is kidnapping and abduction for Japanese civil organizations to support the North Korean asylum seeker, the Mainichi reported on October 23. North Korea required the whereabouts and the truth of 20 Japanese women who followed their husbands to North Korea at the time of repatriation to the North and where Japanese Non-Governmental Organizations kidnapped North Korean people secretly.