Half A Century in the Hellish Nightmare: South Korean POWS Tell Their Story; DFF Presents Them Freedom Award
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Working with Korean War veteran Dr. Thomas Chung who heads the Korean POW Rescue Committee, DFF hosted a forum with Chang-Ho Cho and Chang- Seok Kim, two former South Korean POWs who had recently escaped from North Korea having been held since the Korean War. The forum was entitled “Half a Century in the Hellish Nightmare: South Korean POWs Tell Their Story.” Special guests at the forum included Ambassador James Lilley, embassy representatives from the countries that helped South Korea when North Korea invaded, and representatives from both the Korean War Veterans Association and the National Alliance of Families for the Return of American Servicemen and Women. Cho was captured in 1951 and escaped from North Korea in 1994, and Kim was captured in 1953 and escaped in 2000.
In introductory remarks, Dr. Chung explained that during the negotiation of the cease-fire, North Korea and China insisted they wanted to exchange POWs on an all-for-all basis, but the United Nations Command insisted on voluntary exchanges. “The total held by their side was 82,491 POWs, but they sent only 13,404 of the prisoners, of which 3,846 were U.S. Army, and the rest of them mainly South Korean,” explained Chung. “The rest of them? North Korea claimed they wanted to stay in North Korea.”
South Korean Ministry of Defense, there are approximately 500 POWs still alive being held captive in North Korea. Chung emphasized that these POWs fought for democracy and freedom and stopped the expansion of communism on the Korean peninsula. They fought under the U.N. flag. Nevertheless, they are still captives, and most people have forgotten their existence. “We need to rescue these people,” he said.
In his remarks, South Korean POW Cho expressed his gratitude to the 33,629 U.S. soldiers who fought and died for freedom and peace for the Korean peninsula: “I will never forget them,” Cho said.
Regarding his life in North Korea, he explained he was completely isolated and kept in an underground cave with no toilet, no blankets, no pillow, nothing. During the early years, Cho said one-third of the South Korean POWs perished, while one-half of U.S. Army prisoners perished.
Cho described the political prison camp system in North Korea where people can be sent for a minimum ten year sentence if they complain about the system. He also described public executions: “When they execute the prisoner, they don’t do it within the prison camp. They take the prisoner out, and in front of the immediate family, in front of a large crowd, they execute the prisoner.”
In North Korea, school children are raised to believe that the United States is the mortal enemy. Cho said the Kim Jong Il regime is a barbaric, murderous regime and the whole country of North Korea is a big prison with no human rights whatsoever. “They are holding the entire population as hostages,” he explained, “The only thing allowed in North Korea is to follow blindly whatever is decided by the regime and the party.”
The second South Korean POW to
speak, Kim, began by describing the
Korean War, as “the fight for life and
death of the Republic of Korea. In that
sea of fire and the sea of blood, we
shed blood together, Americans and
Koreans.”
Kim said he was wounded and captured by the Chinese Red Army during the war. In August 1953, he was transferred from the Chinese Red Army field hospital to a POW camp which was a mining camp in Pyong-namdo province. There were 500 POWs altogether including South Korean POWs and at least six American POWs.
Even though the POWs were sick, undernourished and a useless force, the North Korean regime kept the prisoners to use as a labor force to help with reconstruction after the war’s devastation. “I was a prisoner of war for 50 years in North Korea,” Kim said.