Tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers were captured by North Korean and Chinese forces during the Korean War (1950–1953) but were not returned during the prisoner exchanges under the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement. Most are presumed dead, but the South Korean government estimated in 2007 that some 560 South Korean prisoners of war (POWs) still survived in North Korea.2007 Ministry of Defense Report to the National Assembly (2007년 국방부 국정 감사 자료). Ministry of Defense, Republic of Korea. 2007. The issue of unaccounted South Korean POWs from the Korean War has been in dispute since the 1953 armistice. North Korea continues to deny that it holds these South Korean POWs. Interest in the issue has been renewed since 1994, when Cho Chang-ho, a former South Korean soldier presumed to have been killed in the war, escaped from North Korea. As of 2008, 79 former South Korean soldiers had escaped from North Korea.
There have also been reports that several hundred US prisoners of war may not have been returned by North Korea,The U.S. knew in 1953 North Koreans Held American P.O.W.'s. New York Times, September 17, 1996 article.Nigel Cawthorne's book The Iron Cage is a sequel to his controversial book The Bamboo Cage, about Vietnam War POWs. The Iron Cage concerns unreturned POWs from earlier wars, particularly Korea and World War II. but the vast majority of unaccounted POWs are South Koreans.
Origins The treatment of prisoners of war and their repatriation were complicated issues during the Korean War. Nominally, both the communist and the United Nations forces were committed to the terms of the 1949 Third Geneva Convention, regarding the treatment of POWs. However, both sides applied exceptions and the negotiations regarding POWs were contentious and difficult.
Korean prisoners were assigned to one of three types of POW camps. Peace camps were for POWs sympathetic to communism, reform camps held highly skilled POWs who were indoctrinated in communist ideologies, and the third type was the normal POW camps. Prisoners in the first two camp types were prized and usually neither exchanged nor released.
The North Koreans viewed South Korean forces not as enemy soldiers, protected by the Geneva Conventions, but as fellow Koreans, who had been led astray into "war crimes against their people" by imperialist forces. According to such reasoning, it was justified to "re-educate" those South Koreans and allow the ones who were fit to volunteer for the North Korean military. That was common practice, and many South Korean POWs had been enlisted in the North Korean military. Although North Korea asserts that all such former South Korean soldiers had volunteered freely, others, including former South Korean POWs who have escaped in recent years, allege that there had been coercion.
When negotiations for POW exchanges began in 1951, the UN Command estimated that 88,000 South Korean soldiers were missing in action (MIA). However the communists claimed to hold only 7,712 South Korean POWs. The UN Command protested the huge discrepancy in their POW estimates and the number given by the communists, and it noted that the number of POWs submitted by the communists was far smaller than the 65,000 South Koreans that the North Koreans and Chinese had claimed to have captured in their own announcements. The communists insisted that many POWs had been killed in UN air raids and died of disease and that all captives who had recognized their crimes of "participating in imperialists' war" had been released at the front and allowed to return to their original army or home town.
The UN Command noted that only about 200 former POWs had returned to UN lines and charged that the communist list was small because many South Korean POWs had been press-ganged into joining the North Korean military. The UN demanded that South Korean POWs in the North Korean military also be repatriated. The communists claimed that all of the former POWs who were serving in their forces had volunteered to do so and refuted that as "a conspiracy to carry away more than one hundred thousand soldiers from the People's Army."
South Korean President Syngman Rhee had been reluctant about the Armistice talks to begin with and was particularly opposed to any involuntary repatriation of former South Koreans to North Korea. Many other South Korean leaders had also been unhappy with the ceasefire negotiations in general, as well as the issue of anti-communist POWs in UN custody. The tensions between the South Koreans and their UN allies erupted when the South Koreans unilaterally released 25,000 anti-communist POWs on June 18 of 1953.
The unilateral release of the anti-communist POWs by South Koreans complicated negotiations. Doing so without resolving the issue of South Korean MIA missing from the POW lists from the communist forces may have been detrimental to the POWs held in North Korea. However, the fact that the communists had begun with such a small list of POWs is an indication that they had little intention of returning many of the South Koreans.
The UN and the communists finally signed the Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953, a little over a month after the release of the anti-communist POWs by South Korea. That ended the fierce fighting which had continued for two years even as negotiations dragged on. Both the UN and communist forces agreed that POWs who did not desire repatriation would be turned over to a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, led by the Indian military, which would interview individual prisoners and allow them to choose their side in a neutral setting. In the following two months, POWs exchanges were carried out under the agreement. The UN Command repatriated 75,823 communist POWs (among them, 70,183 North Koreans), and the communists returned only 12,773 UN POWs. Only 8,726 South Koreans were returned, less than 10% of the total of South Korean MIAs.
Number of POWs held in North Korea
South Korean POWs The exact number of South Korean POWs who were detained in North Korea after the war is unknown, as is the number who still survive in North Korea. In its report to the legislature in October 2007, the Korean Ministry of Defense reported that "a total of 41,971 South Korean soldiers were missing during the Korean War, of which 8,726 were repatriated through POW exchanges after the Armistice of 1953. Some 13,836 have been determined to have been killed based on other information. To date, the status of 19,409 soldiers has not been confirmed." Most of these unconfirmed were believed to have been unrepatriated POWs. Other estimates of South Korean POWs held by the North Koreans at the Armistice have been higher. Yi Hang-gu, a writer and North Korea expert currently in South Korea who had served as a Sergeant in the Korean People's Army, has testified that he commanded former South Korean POWs who had been enlisted into the Korean People's Army during the Korean War. Yi's unit, the 22nd Brigade, was composed mostly of former South Korean captives led by North Korean officers and non-commissioned officers. Yi has said the number of South Korean POWs who survived in North Korea at the end of the fighting "could have been about 50,000-60,000." In July 2020 it is reported that 50,000 South Korean POWS were never repatriated from North Korea in 1953.BBC News July 26,2020 The children of Korean War prisoners who never came home
The South Korean government estimates that 560 South Korean POWs still survive in North Korea. This number is based upon analysis of various testimonies from defectors and former POWs who managed to escape North Korea. Other researchers (e.g. the Korean Institute for National Unification's 2008 White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea) think the actual number of POWs still alive in North Korea could be higher, since many of the POWs who have recently managed to escape had been presumed to have been killed.
American and other UN POWs On September 17, 1996, The New York Times reported the possible presence of American POWs in North Korea, citing recently declassified documents. The documents show that the U.S. Defense Department claimed to know in December 1953 that "more than 900 American troops were alive at the end of the war but were never released by the North Koreans." The Pentagon did not confirm the report, saying they had no clear evidence that any American POWs were being held against their will in North Korea, but pledged to continue to investigate accounts of defectors and others who said they had seen American POWs there. The North Korean government has said it is not holding any American soldiers.
Treatment of POWs by North Korean and Chinese forces North Korea did not recognize the POW status of its South Korean captives, and viewed them as "liberated fighters." Because of this fundamental difference in perspective, captured South Korean soldiers were treated very differently from other UN captives. Articles 49 through 57 of the 1949 Geneva Convention III specifically restrict the use of POW labor for military purposes. However, it was common practice to enlist former South Korean volunteers into its own forces after several weeks of re-education.
Some of the South Koreans were assigned to front line combat units, such as Yi Hang-gu's 22nd Brigade. Many more were assigned to construction units repairing railroads and airfields and disposing unexploded ordnance. This repair work was particularly dangerous due to the heavy air raids on supply lines and airfields in North Korea by UN air forces.
The Chinese forces initially did not recognize the Geneva Conventions and followed its own "Policy of Tolerance". This policy was based upon Confucian codes and traditions where enemy forces who have surrendered are allowed to join their captors. Official Chinese records distinguish between prisoners who were "captured" and those who "surrendered". On July 13 of 1952, the Chinese forces changed their policy and committed to the Geneva Conventions - and demanded full repatriation of its own POWs according to Article 118.
Punishment for transgressions by the South Koreans was harsh. Lieutenant Cho Chang-ho, a former South Korean artillery officer who escaped from North Korea in 1994, testified before the U.S. Congress on April 27, 2006. In 1952 he had been caught trying to escape back to South Korean lines and was sentenced by court martial to thirteen years in prison. He served six years in a political prison camp where conditions were unsanitary and prisoners suffered from malnutrition. There were four other South Korean officer POWs held with Cho, all of whom perished from disease in prison.
Other UN prisoners also suffered horrific treatment. Out of 7,000 US prisoners, 2,800 (40 percent) died in captivity. Diet and medical conditions were notoriously bad. However, other UN prisoners were not enlisted in large numbers into the North Korean forces or made to work for the communist war effort, the way that South Koreans had been. The diet, as bad as it was, was comparable to that of North Korean peasants and medical supplies were unavailable to doctors.