Posted on Jul 28, 2023
South Korean POWs abandoned for decades in North Korea
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At the age of 92, Lee Dae-bong doesn't particularly enjoy getting out of bed. He has lived enough of a life. As he readjusts his pyjamas, his left hand reveals three missing fingers.
His injury is not the result of the war he fought, but the subsequent 54 years he was forced to toil in a North Korean coal mine.
The former South Korean soldier was captured during the Korean War by Chinese troops, who were fighting alongside North Korea. It was 28 June 1953; the first day of the battle of Arrowhead Hill, and less than a month before the armistice brought an end to three brutal years of fighting.
All, bar three of his platoon, were killed that day. As he and the two other survivors were loaded onto a cargo train, he assumed they were heading home to South Korea, but the train veered North, to the Aoji coal mine, where he would spend most of his life. His family was told he had been killed in combat.
Between 50,000 and 80,000 South Korean soldiers were held captive in North Korea after the Korean War ended with an armistice agreement that divided the peninsula.
A peace treaty never followed, and the prisoners have never been returned. Mr Lee was one of the very few who managed to plot his own escape.
His injury is not the result of the war he fought, but the subsequent 54 years he was forced to toil in a North Korean coal mine.
The former South Korean soldier was captured during the Korean War by Chinese troops, who were fighting alongside North Korea. It was 28 June 1953; the first day of the battle of Arrowhead Hill, and less than a month before the armistice brought an end to three brutal years of fighting.
All, bar three of his platoon, were killed that day. As he and the two other survivors were loaded onto a cargo train, he assumed they were heading home to South Korea, but the train veered North, to the Aoji coal mine, where he would spend most of his life. His family was told he had been killed in combat.
Between 50,000 and 80,000 South Korean soldiers were held captive in North Korea after the Korean War ended with an armistice agreement that divided the peninsula.
A peace treaty never followed, and the prisoners have never been returned. Mr Lee was one of the very few who managed to plot his own escape.
South Korean POWs abandoned for decades in North Korea
Posted from bbc.com
Korean War
POW/MIA
South Korea
North Korea
Posted 9 mo ago
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I can’t begin to imagine the POW being forgotten for so long under such dire conditions and having the will to survive, PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
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Excellent post. Thank You for sharing this shipmate. He has lived a full rough life already.
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
"Tens of thousands of South Korean prisoners of war were never returned by Pyongyang after the 1950-53 Korean War. Instead, they were assigned to toil at coal mines in slave-like conditions, with their children and grandchildren inheriting the brutal fate, according to the Seoul-based Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)."
"Tens of thousands of South Korean prisoners of war were never returned by Pyongyang after the 1950-53 Korean War. Instead, they were assigned to toil at coal mines in slave-like conditions, with their children and grandchildren inheriting the brutal fate, according to the Seoul-based Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)."
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