North Korean Abductions of South Koreans - North Korea's Position About The Abduction Issue

North Korea's Position About The Abduction Issue

North Korea has shown different positions on the abduction issue.

In the case of Japanese abduction, on September 17, 2002, the North Korean government officially admitted the kidnapping of 13 Japanese citizens, at the meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Japanese Prime minister Koizumi.

But as for the South Korean abduction issue, North Korea has consistently claimed that there was no South Korean abductees in North Korea. After the Armistice in 1953, Pyongyang has refused to allow the release of a single South Korean wartime abductee despite a provision allowing civilian abductees to return home in Article III of the Korean War Armistice Agreement a document signed by representatives from the United States, North Korea, and China. Instead, they only returned 19 foreigners to the South. Unlike Koreans, Japanese and other foreigners have no ties to the peninsula and thus Pyongyang is likely to see them as liabilities.

In regard to post war abductees, Pyongyang insists that the South Koreans defected to North Korea, and remain there of their own free will, but refuses to allow South Korean relatives to communicate with them. Despite the testimonies of former abductees who have escaped from the North on their own recently, North Korea has held fast to the existing position: "There are no South Korean abductees and we cannot confirm their existence." The ex-husband of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota, himself a suspected abductee from the South, was allowed to meet his South Korean mother in 2006, but Yokota's parents called the meeting a publicity stunt by Pyongyang meant to isolate his daughter from her Japanese family, as the man has now remarried to a native North Korean and has a son with her.