Posted on 01/12/2008 5:53:48 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
S. Korea may seek 'U.N. resolution' for return of POWs in N. Korea
SEOUL, Jan. 12 (Yonhap) -- South Korea may seek help from the international community in pressing North Korea to return South Korean prisoners of war, the Defense Ministry said Saturday.
North Korea has so far balked at South Korean requests to return POWs, saying it has never held any South Korean citizens against their will.
"The government plans to refer the issue of POWs to the international community so it could influence North Korea to return the prisoners," the ministry said in a recently released book on the prisoners.
The government, in particular, will ask the U.N. General Assembly and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to adopt a resolution on the return, the book said.
"A U.N. resolution not only has symbolic meaning but also can be used as an objective standard for imposing international sanctions against certain state offenders of human rights standards or deciding to provide aid," a ministry official said requesting anonymity.
Government data show that about 19,000 South Korean soldiers went missing in action during the 1950-53 Korean War. The government estimates about 560 POWs are still alive in the North.
Seventy of them have been returned home as of the end of October, last year, including 13 who had died from natural causes.
However, several POW's escaped and came home via China for last decade.
Ping!
They still have American POWs no doubt, a few, in their 70s and 80s, although probably most died, or freaked out and were put down. When Kim is toppled, the truth will in fact come out. I hope some of them could be returned to their hometowns, some 55 or so years later.
Would that be weird if you have US soldier relative who was capture by North Koreans in 1950s marry one of North Korean women she bore him children can you imagine if 50 years down the road you meet say your father uncle offspring that be so weird
Do you think American relatives want meet their Father or uncle North Korean offsprings I think there be some don’t want meet them
I would
Government data show that about 19,000 South Korean soldiers went missing in action during the 1950-53 Korean War. The government estimates about 560 POWs are still alive in the North.<<<
My heart breaks for all the relations of the 19,000, who do not know if their loved one is still alive, or dead.
I am sure many of them think their loved one is one of the 560.
15 years after WW2, I was in my Aunt’s car, she was driving down 5th Avenue, in the heart of San Diego.
Suddenly she slammed on the brakes, jumped out and ran over to the sidewalk, and stared at a man.
Then came back and joined us.
Later I asked her about it.
My Uncle Bill Brown was ‘lost on the beach at Normandy’, during invasion in WW2.
They never sent his body home, so she was for the next 50 years, looking for him, sure he had been wounded in the head and lost his memory, so one day she would find him again.
Life goes one for the survivor, but never will it be the same again.
Do you think American relatives want meet their Father or uncle North Korean offsprings I think there be some don’t want meet them
I would<<<
Many would want to meet them, but you are correct, there are some that would not.
During the Korean war, I had 2 brothers in Military service and more cousins than I can remember the names of.
Many of them training at the San Diego Naval Base or shipping out from there, all of them contacting my mother for a home cooked meal.
My Mother had 5 kids with my father, they divorced and he went back to Arkansas, married a woman there with a couple of kids.
The day came, my stepbrother was in the Navy.
So my father called my mother and asked her to look after him and she did......
Sometimes I felt like a taxi, in my much loved 40 Ford, with its loud pipes, I would make as high as 5 pickup trips to the Navy base, to pick up the brothers and cousins and friends for a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner.
It was simply the way things were once done in America.
I am glad you would want to meet then ‘other’ family, as we know now, not many of the men went or stayed there by choice.
That sound like JAG episode I think main character father was capture by Russians he had another family
YEAH i wouldn’t mind meeing if I have relative who fought in Korean war I just want them just once
LOL, just the way I was raised.
The MP’s at the gate, were sure that I was not taking 5 loads of sailors home to ‘Mother’......
But I had been approved to pick each group of them up and had names and places for each one to be met at.
My Mother never had much, but she always said, of course we have enough to feed company, we will just add more water to the soup.
Mother’s twin brother had been in the Army during WW2, and I think he was the one who educated her on how lonesome our and indeed all Military people are away from home, going and coming and never knowing when the next battle comes.
People from other countries are always worth meeting, one never knows what they can learn.
But for all that, I have one sister that did not learn from Mother, she is a snob and I can promise you, she would not meet with them.
So goes real life and fiction is only a mirror of it.
Laughing, as I recall that at that same Thanksgiving dinner, she also had my father’s mother, and 2 of her friends that were already old and had no place to go for Thanksgiving dinner.
All I remember is people, lots of them.
‘Harm’ Rabb’s father was shot down over North Vietnam and was sent to the Soviet Union, where he lived in a camp in Siberia and had a son with a Russian woman. Harm met his half-brother, Sergei Zhukov, several times during the series. He was an enlisted soldier in the Russian Army fighting in Chechnya.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.