North Abducts Farmers From S. Korea

In a bizarre incident that raises fresh questions about North Korea’s intentions, about a dozen armed North Korean soldiers abducted two South Korean farmers who were gathering acorns inside the demilitarized zone Friday, U.N. and South Korean officials said.

North Korea claimed that the villagers had trespassed into their side of the DMZ, which separates the two countries, the official North Korean news agency reported.

There was no word this morning on what, if any, conditions the North was setting for their return.

South Korean defense officials said the abduction might have come in retaliation for their announcement earlier Friday that a can of food donated by a Virginia church had been found inside a North Korean submarine that ran aground in South Korea in September 1996.

It was unclear why South Korea had not previously announced the find, which may indicate that food donated to North Korea for famine relief was diverted to the military.

Friday’s incident began shortly before noon, when farmers from Taesongdong, a village of about 220 South Koreans inside the DMZ, went to work in a nearby rice field.

“These [people] were half a mile away from the village and still definitely south of the military demarcation line--effectively the border--when these North Koreans nabbed them,” said Jim Coles, spokesman for the United Nations Command, which controls the area.

South Korea’s Dong Ah Ilbo newspaper reported today that South Korean officials were reviewing whether the villagers trespassed into the northern side of the demarcation or whether the incident was a provocation from the North.

Korean media identified the two villagers as Hong Sung Soon, 66, and her son, Kim Young Bok, 41, who had split off on a hillside to pick acorns, which South Koreans eat. The two were about 30 yards inside the South Korean side of the demarcation line that bisects the DMZ when they were seized by the soldiers from the northern Korean People’s Army, KBS state television said.

U.N. soldiers nearby witnessed the abduction but were unable to stop it, Coles said. No gunfire was exchanged, and the three other villagers in the rice field were not aware their companions had disappeared until soldiers came to inform them and send them home, one of the farmers told KBS.

South Korea demanded a “safe and speedy return of the abducted residents,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense.

“If the two residents are returned immediately, there will be no problem. But if they are taken north, the situation could last quite a while,” a spokesman for President Kim Young Sam told Reuters.

Coles said U.N. and North Korean commanders had met to discuss the incident Friday afternoon. He said the two sides were in “continuous contact” but that he did not know what, if anything, the North Koreans were demanding in exchange for the villagers’ release.

The DMZ, 151 miles long and 2 1/2 miles wide, was created at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, when each side moved 1 1/4 miles back from what had been the front line. It is bisected by a demarcation line, which consists of 1,292 black and white marker panels.

In some areas, where terrain is rugged and the markers have been overgrown, the line is poorly marked. But “in the area where this happened, it is very well marked,” Coles said.

The strip south of the fence that marks the beginning of the DMZ is heavily mined. Under the armistice agreement that ended the war, the only land mines inside the DMZ are supposed to be those left over from the fighting, although the U.N. forces charge that the North Koreans have violated that agreement. Taesongdong and nearby fields have been cleared of the devices.

There have been a number of recent clashes along the DMZ. Gunfire was exchanged in July, and in August, South Korean soldiers opened fire on Northern troops who had crossed the demarcation line and refused to go back.

Shortly afterward, a North Korean soldier on patrol was washed into the Injin River and floated down into Southern territory, Coles said. He was held by South Korea for about 10 days before being repatriated.

But in recent days, the DMZ has been “as normal as you get over there,” Coles said.

A U.N. statement said the abduction is being investigated as a violation of the armistice that ended the Korean War.

Earlier Friday, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense announced that a can of beef with a label saying it was donated by the Mennonite Churches of Virginia as “Food for Relief” had been found inside the North Korean submarine that ran aground off South Korea’s east coast last year.

“We found the canned goods last year from the submarine, and a sooty label was later found caught between a seat and the submarine wall,” an official told Reuters.

U.S. officials have recently warned that humanitarian aid will be terminated unless the North Koreans allow better monitoring of where the food earmarked for children and the elderly is going.

U.N. World Food Program officials have said they are confident that none of the aid they distribute has been diverted to the North Korean military.

In Soonchon, a city of 300,000 in southern Cholla province near the southern tip of South Korea, people watching the evening news in a local restaurant scratched their heads over what might have prompted the latest incident.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Kim Young Mi, 20, a college student. “They must have some reason behind it, but I don’t know what good it will do them. Anyway, there’s something fishy about it.”

Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.