2023-07-27 06:29:53
By Jean Mackenzie, BBC Seoul correspondent
July 27, 2023
image captiontext,
After being a prisoner of war in North Korea for half a century, Li Dafeng finally fled to China by wading through the river.
Lee Dae-bong, 92, isn’t particularly keen on getting out of bed. He’s seen enough in his life. When he adjusted the pajamas on his body, his left hand was missing three fingers.
His injuries were not from the fighting, but from the 54 years that followed when he was forced to work as a coolie in a North Korean coal mine.
The former South Korean soldier was captured by Chinese troops during the Korean War, which fought alongside North Korea. It was June 28, 1953, the first day of the Battle of Arrowhead Mountain, and less than a month after three years of brutal fighting ended with an armistice.
That day, except for the three people in his platoon, all the others died. Just as he and two other survivors were being loaded onto a freight train, he thought he was heading back to South Korea, but instead the train turned north, toward the Awuji coal mine. He would later spend most of the rest of his life there. His family was told that he had been killed in combat.
Between 50,000 and 80,000 South Korean soldiers were imprisoned in North Korea after the Korean War, which ended with an armistice that divided the peninsula between North and South.
A peace treaty was never concluded between the two sides, and the prisoners of war were never returned. Li Dafeng is one of the very few people who can successfully plan his escape.
image copyrightGetty Images
image captiontext,
Of the tens of thousands of South Korean veterans captured in North Korea, only 80 managed to return home.
The truce has largely held through for decades, with the exception of a few skirmishes, making it the longest truce in history.
However, the absence of a peace treaty made life difficult for Lee Dae-bong, his fellow POWs and their families. On the 70th anniversary of the armistice between North and South Korea, their stories are a reminder that the Korean War is not over.
During the first few years of his captivity, Lee Dae-bong was forced to work one week a week in a coal mine and the next week to study North Korean ideology until 1956, when he and other prisoners were stripped of their military ranks and then told to Get married and integrate into society.
But they and their new families were characterized as marginalized and placed at the bottom of North Korea’s harsh social class system.
Digging coal day after day for more than 50 years is an extremely painful job, but Li Dafeng said that the most unbearable thing is the ghostly shadow of injury and death.
One day, his hand got stuck in a coal processing machine, but the loss of a few fingers was minor, as he had seen many friends die in a series of gas explosions.
“We gave our entire youth to that coal mine, waiting and terrified of dying so meaninglessly,” he said. “I was very homesick, especially my family. Even animals, when they were dying, and return to his cave.”
image captiontext,
Li Dae-bong was forced to work as a coolie in a North Korean coal mine, and lost three fingers as a result.
As North and South Korea commemorated the peace that remained on the peninsula, many prisoners of war and their families blamed both sides for the suffering.
Several South Korean presidents have met with the North Korean leader, but efforts to bring them home have been low on the agenda.
After releasing only 8,000 prisoners of war, North Korea has refused to admit that there are more prisoners of war.
The topic wasn’t even brought up when then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il met at a summit in 2000.
Li Dafeng said that it was at that moment that he felt that all hope was lost, and he realized that the only way to return to his hometown was to escape.
His wife was long gone, and Li Dafeng started his journey three days after his only son was killed in a mine accident. Aged 77 at the time, he secretly waded across the river into China when it was up to his neck.
He was one of 80 prisoners of war who escaped and returned to South Korea, of whom only 13 are still alive. Tens of thousands of other prisoners of war were left to die in the mines. Few are still alive—only their children.
Chae Ah-in was six years old when his father died in a gas explosion at a North Korean mine. Soon after, her older sisters were sent to replace their father.
She was beaten and bullied mercilessly while still in school. She couldn’t understand why her family was cursed. It wasn’t until later, when she overheard her sisters whispering, that she learned that her father was a South Korean soldier.
“For a long time, I hated him,” she recalled from her home in the suburbs of Seoul, where she arrived in 2010. “I blame him for making us all suffer.”
At the age of 28, Cai Yaren also chose to escape the painful life in North Korea, first crossing the border to China, where he lived for 10 years. It wasn’t until she arrived in Korea that she realized her father was a hero.
“Now I respect him and try to remember him,” she said. “I feel different from other North Korean defectors because I am the daughter of an honored South Korean war veteran.”
But Ms. Chae, the daughter of a war veteran who died for her country, is not recognized by the South Korean government.
Prisoners of war who failed to return home were recorded as missing, presumed dead, and honored as war heroes.
“Korea is what it is today thanks to people like my father, but our suffering has not been resolved,” she said, wanting both herself and her father to be given the recognition they deserve.
image copyrightGetty Images
image captiontext,
Relatives of prisoners of war have been demanding for years that their loved ones return home and expect them to be recognized as war heroes.
There are about 280 children of prisoners of war who managed to escape to South Korea. Son Myeong-hwa is one such. She is president of the Korean War POW Family Association and is advocating on their behalf.
“The children of prisoners of war in North Korea suffer the guilt of being implicated, but in South Korea we are not recognized. We want to be treated with the same respect as other families of fallen veterans,” she said.
The South Korean government told us that they have no plans to change the classification of veterans.
When Li Dafeng returned to his hometown, he was already an old man, and his parents and brothers had passed away. Although South Korea has changed beyond recognition, his sister takes him back to his original homeland.
Li Dafeng recalled that his friends in North Korea begged their children to take them back to their hometown for burial before they died. Their wishes have not been fulfilled. There is no peace treaty between the two Koreas, making it difficult for these families to find their own peace.
Lee Dae-bong and Chae Ah-in still dream of the unification of North and South Korea.
Ms. Cai hopes to bring her father’s body back to South Korea for burial.
For both North and South Korea, peace and reunification remain the official stated goals. But 70 years after the armistice, that dream seemed out of reach.
1690515050
#Armistice #years #South #Korean #prisoners #left #North #Korea #fled #BBC #News #中文