I find this exceedingly difficult to believe, but I’ll let you make your own call. From the Joongang Ilbo:
In recent years, a group of Westerners, believed to be U.S. and British prisoners captured during the Korean War, were held in a notorious North Korean prison, a North Korean army defector has told reporters at a press conference in Washington.
Wire services reported that Kim Yong, 53, who was once a lieutenant colonel of the North’s national security and defense agency, defected in 1998 after five years in detention in the North’s political prison No. 18. Mr. Kim escaped the country and fled to South Korea by way of China and Mongolia.
The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea published a report on Mr. Kim’s accounts earlier this week.
Speaking at a press conference at the National Press Club, Mr. Kim said he had seen seven westerners in 1996 at a road construction site where he and other men were working as forced laborers, Yonhap News Agency reported. The men appeared to be between 70 and 75 years old, the report quoted him as saying.
“A fellow inmate told me that the men were U.S. and British soldiers captured at the Chosin Reservoir battle during the Korean War,” Mr. Kim said. He said North Korean leader Kim Il Sung ordered the men held at the prison, adding that they were so thin that they seemed to be only skin and bones.
Like I said, I’m unable to believe that POWs could possibly still be alive - just getting to 70 or so is an achievement, and I can’t imagine that the living conditions of North Korean prison camps are conducive to prolonging one’s life expectancy.
Still, who the fuck knows.
3 Comments
Could be from more recent captures. US Reconnaisance flights have
gone down in the region, and many airmen remain unaccounted for.
By Any Means Necessary, great book by William E. Burrows, is about
these flights, and is an outstanding read.
HI, ITS A GOOD MORNING FOR A SOUTH KOREAN SOLIDER HELD SINCE THE WAR AND ESCAPED AND WAS RETURNED BY CHINA OVER 50 YEARS AS POW THAT CERTIANLLY MEANS THAT THEIR HAS TO BE SOME AMERICAN AND BRITISH POWS. I DONT UNDERSTAND WE WONT GET OUR POWS OUT OF NORTH KOREA BUT WE WILL SEND THEM FOOD. BUT LETS PRAY FOR THE RETURN OF AT LEAST 1 TO MAKE IT OUT. THEN THE U.S. GOVERMENT AND ALL OF THE PAST PRESIDENTS CAN BE ASKED WHY DIDNT YOU HELP GET ALL OF THEM OUT? THANK YOU AND REMEMBER THE POWS ALL OVER THE WORLD WHO DIDNT MAKE IT HOME. JEFF BURNETT 12-27-2003@0704 CST
To me, even if there is a 1 in 1000 chance of even one POW still being alive, we MUST take action. The U.S. Military does not leave its own behind. Even if not… heres one of all my fellows who never got to sit on a beach drink a bud and fool around with an American girl again.