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Korean War POWs (Prisoners of War) Detained in North Korea (Korean: 국군포로; Hanja: 國軍捕虜) are the tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers who were captured by the North Korean and Chinese forces during the Korean War (1950–53) but were not returned during the prisoner exchanges under the 1953 Armistice Agreement. Most are presumed dead but the South Korean government estimates some 560 South Korean POWs still survive in North Korea.〔2007 Ministry of Defense Report to the National Assembly (2007년 국방부 국정 감사 자료). Ministry of Defense, Republic of Korea. 2007.〕〔We Have Not Forgotten - Assessing the Issue of ROK POWs in North Korea and Possibilities for Relief (조국은 당신들을 잊지 않습니다 - 국군포로 문제의 실상과 대책). Ministry of Defense, Republic of Korea. National Assembly Library. 2008. http://academic.naver.com/view.nhn?doc_id=15538369〕 The unaccounted South Korean POW issue has been in dispute since the Armistice in 1953. North Korea continues to deny it holds these South Korean POWs.〔http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2011/06/24/7/0301000000AEN20110624003900315F.HTML〕 Interest in this issue has been renewed since 1994, when Lt. Cho Chang-ho, a former South Korean soldier presumed to have been killed in the war, escaped from North Korea. As of 2008, 79 former South Korean soldiers have escaped from North Korea. There have also been reports that several hundred American POWs may not have been returned by North Korea.〔The U.S. knew in 1953 North Koreans Held American P.O.W.'s. ''New York Times'', September 17, 1996 article. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/17/world/us-knew-in-1953-north-koreans-held-american-pow-s.html〕〔Nigel Cawthorne's book ''The Iron Cage'' is a sequel to his controversial book ''The Bamboo Cage'', about Vietnam War POWs. ''The Iron Cage'' concerns unreturned POWs from earlier wars, particularly Korea and World War II.〕 But the vast majority of unaccounted POWs are South Koreans. ==Origins== The treatment of Prisoners of War and their repatriation was a complicated issue in the Korean War. Nominally, both the Communists and United Nations forces were committed to the terms of the 1949 Geneva Conventions III, regarding the treatment of POWs. However, both sides applied exceptions and the negotiations regarding POWs were contentious and difficult.〔Man-ho HEO, 2002. "North Korea's Continued Detention of South Korean POWs since the Korean and Vietnam Wars." Korea Journal of Defense Analysis. Vol. XIV, No. 2, Fall 2002. pp. 141-165 http://kida.re.kr/eng/publication/pdf/08-Heo.PDF〕 Korean prisoners were assigned to one of three types of POW camps. ''Peace camps'' were for POWs sympathetic to communism, ''reform camps'' held highly skilled POWs who were indoctrinated in communist ideologies and the third type was the ''normal POW camps''. Prisoners in the first two camp types were prized and not usually exchanged nor released. The North Koreans viewed South Korean forces not as enemy soldiers protected by the Geneva Conventions, but as fellow Koreans who had been led astray into "war crimes against their people" by imperialist forces. According to such reasoning, it was justified to "re-educate" these South Koreans and allow the ones who were fit to volunteer for the North Korean military. This was common practice and many South Korean POWs had been enlisted in the North Korean military. Although North Korea asserts that all such former South Korean soldiers had volunteered freely, others (including former South Korean POWs who have escaped in recent years) allege there was coercion.〔Kyung Seop OH, Yeo Sang YOON, Seon Haeng HUR (2008). A Comprehensive Report on the Issue of Unrepatriated South Korean POWs Held in North Korea. Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. pp. 32-35. http://www.scribd.com/doc/16682782/Comprehensive-Report-on-the-Issue-of-Unrepatriated-South-Korean-POWs-Held-in-North-Korea〕 The UN forces found that many of the prisoners it captured were former South Korean citizens who had been enlisted into the Korean People's Army (in many cases, allegedly against their will). Many of the Chinese soldiers who were captured were former Nationalists who had been enlisted into the Chinese People's Liberation Army after the defeat of the Nationalist armies in China in 1949. Large numbers of such prisoners did not want to be returned to North Korea or Communist China. Because of such prisoners, the UN Command was reluctant to abide by a literal interpretation of Article 118 of the Geneva Convention which states that all POWs were to be "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities." 〔Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68〕 The UN wanted a voluntary repatriation where POWs could choose which side to return. The Communists insisted on a full all-for-all exchange according to a literal interpretation of Article 118.〔Walter G. HERMES, 1992. "Truce Tent and Fighting Front: The United States Army in the Korean War," CHAPTER VII Prisoners of War. http://www.history.army.mil/books/korea/truce/ch7.htm〕 When negotiations for POW exchanges began in 1951, the UN Command estimated that 88,000 South Korean soldiers were missing in action (MIA). However the communist side claimed they held only 7,712 South Korean POWs. The UN Command protested the huge discrepancy in their POW estimates and the number given by the communists, and noted that the number of POWs submitted by the Communists was far smaller than the 65,000 South Koreans that North Korean and Chinese had claimed they had captured in their own announcements. The Communists insisted that many POWs had been killed in UN air raids and died of disease and all captives who had recognized their crimes of "participating in imperialists' war" had been released at the front and allowed to return to their original army or home town. The UN Command noted that only about 200 former POWs had returned to UN lines and charged that the Communist list was small because many South Korean POWs had been press-ganged into joining the North Korean military. The UN demanded that South Korean POWs in the North Korean military also be repatriated. The Communists claimed that all those former POWs who were serving in their forces had volunteered to do so and refuted this as "a conspiracy to carry away more than one hundred thousand soldiers from the People's Army."〔 South Korea's President Syngman Rhee had been reluctant about the Armistice talks to begin with and was particularly opposed to any involuntary repatriation of former South Koreans to North Korea. Many other South Korean leaders had also been unhappy with the ceasefire negotiations in general as well as the issue of anti-communist POWs in UN custody. The tensions between the South Koreans and their UN allies erupted when the South Koreans unilaterally released 25,000 anti-Communist POWs on June 18 of 1953.〔Walter G. HERMES, 1992. "Truce Tent and Fighting Front: The United States Army in the Korean War," CHAPTER XX Leader of the Opposition. http://www.history.army.mil/books/korea/truce/ch20.htm〕 The unilateral release of the anti-Communist POWs by South Koreans complicated negotiations. Doing so without resolving the issue of South Korean MIA missing from the POW lists from the Communist forces may have been detrimental to the POWs that were held in North Korea. However, the fact that the communists began with such a small list of POWs indicated that they had little intention of returning many of the South Koreans.〔 The UN and the Communists finally signed the Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953, a little over a month after the release of the anti-communist POWs by South Korea. This ended the fierce fighting which had continued for two years even as negotiations dragged on. Both the UN and Communist forces agreed that POWs who did not desire repatriation would be turned over to a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission led by the Indian military that would interview individual prisoners and allow them to choose their side in a neutral setting. In the following two months, POWs exchanges were carried out under the agreement. The UN Command repatriated 75,823 communist POWs (among them, 70,183 North Koreans) while the Communists only returned 12,773 UN POWs. Only 8,726 South Koreans were returned. That was less than 10% of the total of South Korean MIAs. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Korean War POWs detained in North Korea」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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