April 13, 2007 - North Korea sent thousands of South Korean prisoners of war to the former Soviet Union during the Korean War, the U.S. edition of the Hankook Ilbo reported citing a newly declassified U.S. document on Wednesday. The South Korean POWs have never been repatriated.
Entitled “The Transfer of U.S. Korean War POWs to the Soviet Union,” the report was written in August 1993 based on testimony obtained by the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission Support Branch of the Research and Analysis Division under the Defense POW/MIA Office (DPMO) after the Cold War ended.
South Korean prisoners of war step out of an ambulance in Munsan, South Korea after they were released following an April 26, 1953 agreement to exchange war prisoner during the Korean War.
According to the report, the former North Korean officer Kan San Kho stated in November 1992 that he assisted in the transfer of thousands of South Korean POWs into 300 to 400 camps in the Soviet Union, most in the taiga but some in Central Asia as well. Already in May 1953, Zygmunt Nagorski, a reporter with the magazine Esquire, covered the transfer of South Korean POWs and their life in the Soviet Union in an in-depth report based on testimony from two agents of the Russian Interior Ministry and an employee of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
The witnesses testified the transit point was through the North Korean-Soviet border at Pos'yet between November 1951 and April 1952 when ice closed the Pacific coast and the Tatar Straits. “These POWs were taken from Pos'yet through Chita by rail to Molotov” now Perm. According to the 1993 report, “The exploitation of POWs as Soviet state policy was blatantly contained in the minutes of a Sept. 19, 1952 meeting between Stalin and Chinese Foreign Minister Chou en-lai in which he recommended that the Communists keep back 20 percent of United Nations POWs as hostages.” The POWs sent to the Chukotsk Peninsula, apparently at least 12,000 of them, “were used to build roads, electric power plants, and airfields. There was a high mortality rate among all these prisoners.”
Entitled “The Transfer of U.S. Korean War POWs to the Soviet Union,” the report was written in August 1993 based on testimony obtained by the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission Support Branch of the Research and Analysis Division under the Defense POW/MIA Office (DPMO) after the Cold War ended.
South Korean prisoners of war step out of an ambulance in Munsan, South Korea after they were released following an April 26, 1953 agreement to exchange war prisoner during the Korean War.
According to the report, the former North Korean officer Kan San Kho stated in November 1992 that he assisted in the transfer of thousands of South Korean POWs into 300 to 400 camps in the Soviet Union, most in the taiga but some in Central Asia as well. Already in May 1953, Zygmunt Nagorski, a reporter with the magazine Esquire, covered the transfer of South Korean POWs and their life in the Soviet Union in an in-depth report based on testimony from two agents of the Russian Interior Ministry and an employee of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
The witnesses testified the transit point was through the North Korean-Soviet border at Pos'yet between November 1951 and April 1952 when ice closed the Pacific coast and the Tatar Straits. “These POWs were taken from Pos'yet through Chita by rail to Molotov” now Perm. According to the 1993 report, “The exploitation of POWs as Soviet state policy was blatantly contained in the minutes of a Sept. 19, 1952 meeting between Stalin and Chinese Foreign Minister Chou en-lai in which he recommended that the Communists keep back 20 percent of United Nations POWs as hostages.” The POWs sent to the Chukotsk Peninsula, apparently at least 12,000 of them, “were used to build roads, electric power plants, and airfields. There was a high mortality rate among all these prisoners.”
No comments:
Post a Comment