The disappearance of Choi Won Mo, the father of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea’s president, Choi Sung Ryeong, has been filed with the UN Working Group on Forced or Involuntary Disappearances.
Upon receipt of the case, the working group is required to demand information of the North’s UN mission in Geneva, Switzerland. The process should be repeated every six months until the North Korean side provides sufficient explanation.
Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, which filed the case, revealed in a press release yesterday, “If this case is registered with the UN working group then this will lend weight to voices urging the return of the abductees in international society.”
[imText1]Armed North Koreans abducted Choi on June 5th, 1967 while he was fishing in the West Sea. Eight crewmembers from the vessel he was aboard were detained, but only five were released three months later. To this date, North Korea has consistently claimed that it ”cannot determine the fate of the abductees.”
However, according to an ‘abduction case management card’ Choi obtained on his father’s case, Choi Snr. was charged with ‘treason’ and received a ‘people’s trial’ in North Korea some years ago. He was then executed publicly in front of Jeongju Station in Jeongju County, North Pyongan Province.
The cause of Choi’s detainment was recorded on the card as murder of a left wing element during the Korean War.
Choi told Daily NK, “My father probably could not return from North Korea because he had been affiliated to General MacArthur’s KLO where he bailed out prisoners of war. At the time of the abduction the ship that my father owned was forfeited to North Korea and the crew members who were released to South Korea returned in another ship.”
Citizen’s Alliance for North Korean Human Rights Organization previously filed the 1969 KAL incident with the same working group in 2010.
