Abducted fisherman goes home after 31 years
Seoul (AsiaNews) – In the decades-old cold war between the two Koreas, the story of Choi Uk-il, a South Korean fisherman abducted by North Korean agents, has had a happy ending. Yesterday, a month after he escaped from North Korea where he was held for 31 years, he safely returned to Seoul via China.
“Thanks for accepting me again,” the 67-year-old man said with tearful eyes, waving the South Korean flag, at the Incheon International Airport as he was being reunited with his wife, two daughters and a son.
In talking about the North, he said it was difficult to live there “due to constant surveillance.”
He was reportedly helped to flee by a South Korean human rights group on the night of December 25. After that he stayed in the Chinese city of Yenji. South Korea’s minister of foreign affairs and trade said that Mr Choi was taken to the South Korean consulate in Shenyang (northern China) on January 5. His deputy Cho Jung-pyo said the government at that point intervened to make Mr Choi’s return possible.
“We asked for Beijing's active cooperation after fully explaining the difference between Choi and other North Korean refugees in China,” he added, declining however to give any details about the negotiations.
China is bound by a treaty with North Korea to repatriate people who cross the border back to the North. But Beijing does allow sometimes those who flee the North to go to South Korea after conducting an investigation to confirm their identities and to check whether they have committed crimes during their stay in China and this despite protests from Pyongyang.
In Mr Choi’s case, the Chinese authorities questioned him on January 11 then gave the go ahead for his repatriation.
Choi uk-il was kidnapped on the East China Sea with 32 other fishermen after their fishing boat was seized by a North Korean naval vessel in August 1975. Of those kidnapped, Ko Myong-sop, 63, was the only one to have returned home safely in 2005.
North Korea uses many South Korean abductees to train its spies about life in the South.
According to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, the North has kidnapped 485 South Koreans since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. It has also taken prisoner another 548 South Korean soldiers during or after the war.
Seoul, under its “sunshine policy” to economically engaging Pyongyang, has maintained a low-key attitude regarding the detained South Koreans in order to avoid irritating its northern counterpart.
For its part, North Korea has said it does not hold any South Koreans against their will.
Japan has also charged North Korea with abducting at least 13 of its nationals during the 1970s and 1980s.
.png)
12/02/2016 15:14
28/08/2006
