Hwang In Cheol has spent the last fourteen years fighting for the
repatriation of his father, who was abducted to North Korea as a result of a
plane hijacking in 1969. Hwang, the 47-year-old representative of Association
for Family Members of the KAL Kidnapping Victims, has been pushing the issue
with barely any external help. However, in spite of domestic barriers and a highly
uncooperative North Korean regime, he has not lost hope.
Thinking back to the beginning of his journey, Hwang recalls, “The first decisive opportunity to verify whether my father was alive or dead came at the 3rd round of separated family reunions in 2001. At those reunions, the mother of stewardess Seong Kyeong Hee met with her daughter. Seong had been abducted to North Korea with my father.”
Hwang’s father, Hwang Won, was 32 years old when he found
himself abducted on KAL YS-11 in December 1969. A North Korean spy named Cho
Chang Hee had hijacked the plane, which was travelling from Gangreung in Gangwon
Province to Gimpo Airport in Seoul. There were 47 passengers and a crew of four
on board, including Hwang. Sixty-six days later, and under intense international
pressure, most of the South Koreans were returned. However, 11 abductees have
never come home.
Recently, Hwang has been appealing for their repatriation by himself. He
frequently appears alone at press interviews, regular photo exhibitions, and official
dialogue with government officials. Although the families of the other
remaining abductees participated in the process at the beginning, they are
advancing in age now and find it increasingly hard to support the movement.
He initially combined his work with that of family organizations
campaigning for the many other South Korean victims of North Korean abduction,
but the subject of KAL abductees, because the number is relatively small, got obscured in the mass and gradually lost the attention of the South Korean government. Therefore, Hwang decided to drive the movement forward alone.
With three daughters, he is lucky enough not to struggle with loneliness.
However, he does face the need to make a living and support a family, and that provides its own very real challenges. “It is
hard enough to make a living working for a normal company,” he says. “It is
terrifying that I earn so little and must spend so much. Sometimes I haven’t
even got the price of a bus fare so I have to sneak on board.” His wife is supportive, but naturally critical: Hwang feels the pain whenever she
points out that “what you are doing is certainly right. But shouldn’t we take
care of our children, too?”
Hwang’s eldest daughter, who was only three when he
began the repatriation movement, is now in her third year of middle school and aims to run for class president next year. Hwang feels sorry that he has not provided adequately for her, but she comforts him, saying that he is working hard to
bring her grandfather back to South Korea. Indeed, his family remains his
greatest supporter.
The support they provide gives him the strength to overcome the most
difficult moments. He has registered significant progress. Hwang Won’s abduction was first registered with a UN body on June 17th, 2010. In October
2012, Hwang spoke with the UN Special Rapporteur for North Korean Human Rights.
He has also met high-ranking officials from the British and French governments
to discuss the repatriation of abductees.
He points out, “Hijacking is an act of barbarity and
terror that cannot occur in a civilized society. This is not an issue just between
South and North Korea; it is an international problem. Hijacking cases have
occurred and then been resolved in other countries, all except the KAL incident
in South Korea. This must be resolved come what may.”
However, the South Korean government has stuck to a rigidly ambivalent approach.
Hwang explains, “I have been appealing for a long time but I always feel that there
isn’t a state institution that I can discuss it with. Most attempts to
negotiate with the South Korean government are completely futile. Even when we went to a
human rights hearing in the UK, we limited our group to two people at the government’s
request but still had to pay our own expenses.”
“In 2006 when North Korea sent notification to the South Korean government
through the Red Cross that it would not be possible to verify if the abductees
were alive or not, the government should have demanded verification time and time again. In March 2012 when North Korea contended that the UN Human Rights
Council Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances was a
‘political attack,’ the South Korean government should have demanded
verification of the status of the abductees even more aggressively,” he asserts.
The fight remains important and worthwhile, though. Just recently Hwang received word that his father, who is now 76, is alive and
living some distance outside Pyongyang. As a result, Hwang is even more active
than before in appealing for the repatriation of the abductees, even though the
indifference of the South Korean government remains palpable.
“The South Korean
government ought to take on board the severity of the abductees’ issue and
confront North Korea’s insincere ripostes. They must demand verification
whether the abductees are still alive or not,” he says. “The North Korean
authorities, on the other hand, should recognize that denial is not an
effective resolution. The abductees issue is now known worldwide, and all I
want to say is that there is no reason not to give verification to a son who
wants to meet his father and is desperate to know where he is.”
