50 Years After Korean War’s End, Ex-POW Returns Home

Fifty years after he was taken prisoner by North Korea, a former South Korean soldier was returned to his homeland Wednesday amid acclaim, but also recriminations that his repatriation had taken so long.

The 72-year-old veteran of the Korean War, Jeon Yong Il, had escaped from North Korea in June by swimming across the Tumen River into China. There he contacted the South Korean Embassy, but was turned away. He eventually was arrested by the Chinese and was about to be deported to North Korea when activists in South Korea heard of his plight and took up his cause.

“I haven’t forgotten my fatherland. I served my country for the past 50 years,” Jeon told reporters, smiling exultantly through tears as he arrived Wednesday at Incheon Airport near Seoul.

Looking thin but healthy with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a jaunty gait, Jeon was accompanied by a female companion who was said to be a North Korean defector. The two immediately were taken at the airport for questioning by South Korean intelligence. Jeon is expected to be reunited with his surviving family, two sisters and a brother, over the weekend.

“His return will be a Christmas present for the whole nation,” said Park Joon Woo, an official of the South Korean Foreign Ministry, adding that the ministry “made its best effort” to bring Jeon home.

Nevertheless, Jeon has become something of a cause celebre for anti-communist and veterans groups in South Korea who believe that their government hasn’t pressed for the release of hundreds of its citizens in North Korea for fear of upsetting the “sunshine policy” of rapprochement between the estranged countries.

The South Korean Defense Ministry estimates that there are about 500 POWs still alive in North Korea, in addition to 487 people who are listed by the South Korean government as having been abducted by North Korea after the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War. North Korea denies holding any of them.

“It is a disgrace. Even when a POW comes knocking on the door, he is turned away,” said Choi Song Ryong, who is president of an association representing families of abducted South Koreans. He says that many abductees who have escaped to China have similarly gotten a cold shoulder from the South Korean Embassy.

He contrasted that with efforts by the Pentagon to send teams to dig for remains of U.S. soldiers killed during the war or Japan’s relentless efforts on behalf of its citizens who were kidnapped by the North Korean regime.

Jeon comes from South Korea’s North Kyongsang province. He was a 21-year-old soldier when he was captured in 1953 in one of the last battles of the Korean War. Officially, he is the 34th POW to escape North Korea, but his case has gotten more publicity because of his strange odyssey through China.

Once in China, Jeon made repeated efforts to contact the South Korean government. He was able to find the telephone number for family members in Taegu, in his home province.

“We didn’t think he was alive. At first we were very surprised and a little dubious,” said Jeon Jun Ok, the son of Jeon’s only surviving brother. “But he knew all the family nicknames and so many details that my father soon realized with certainty that it really was him.”

The brother immediately contacted the police, the nephew said, but they told him they couldn’t help.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, Jeon hit a dead end with the South Korean Embassy, which repeatedly sent him away saying that the Defense Ministry had no record of his capture during the war. It later emerged that Jeon was listed as killed in action, but nobody had bothered to check those records.

Finally, in desperation, Jeon bought a forged South Korean passport in an attempt to sneak back to his homeland. He was arrested Nov. 13 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, as he tried to board a plane for South Korea.

He was taken to a Chinese detention center to await deportation to North Korea, where he probably would have been imprisoned and possibly executed. But South Korean activists got wind of his case and started demonstrating in Seoul. A public outcry erupted after the activists released a short video showing Jeon waiting despondently outside the South Korean Embassy in Beijing.

“How could you neglect an old soldier like this?” demanded one outraged South Korean assemblyman, Lee Man Sup, after the tape was broadcast.

In response, the South Korean government intervened with China to request Jeon’s release and the dropping of charges for his attempt to use a false passport.

The South Korean Defense Ministry has apologized for the incident and said Jeon will be entitled to back pay and compensation of as much as $300,000.

“Once Jeon Yong Il is back in South Korea, the Ministry of National Defense will do its best to ensure that he can live comfortably for the rest of his life,” ministry spokesman Kim Ki Beom said Wednesday.

Still, Jeon’s belated homecoming has aroused anger among many South Koreans, who are well aware of how close the POW came to being returned to North Korea.

“I’m terribly depressed that the government neglected a man who fought for his country,” said Jeong Cheol Su, a 71-year-old veteran. “We’re letting people who are alive just die in North Korea.”

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Jinna Park of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.