USA TODAY International Edition
North Korea has held his dad nearly 50 years
‘Peace Olympics’ offer little solace for son left in limbo
SEOUL – North Korea’s charm offensive at the Olympics has made headlines, but not everyone here is delighted by the synchronized cheerleading squads or the enigmatic smile of dictator Kim Jong Un’s sister.
For Seoul resident Hwang In-cheol, 50, the North’s presence at the Winter Games reminds him of his father, who has been held captive in North Korea since 1969.
Hwang and other human rights activists argue that South Korea’s promotion of the Games in Pyeongchang as the “Peace Olympics” overlooks the forced abduction and detention of its citizens by North Korea.
“The South Korean government has a legal obligation to urge North Korea to return my father,” Hwang said. “But instead of doing that, the government is keeping its silence, and by doing so it has become an inadvertent accomplice to these criminal acts.”
The United Nations estimates as many as 100,000 South Koreans were captured and held in North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, and 516 others have been abducted since, most of them fishermen.
Hwang’s story began when he was only 2. On Dec. 11, 1969, his father Hwang Won boarded a Korean Air Lines flight for a short journey to Seoul from Gangneung, the city now hosting the ice events for the Winter Games.
Ten minutes after takeoff, a hijacker commandeered the plane and forced it to land at Yonpo Airfield, near the city of Hamhung on North Korea’s east coast.
A standoff ensued for more than two months, with North Korea initially insisting the pilot had flown to the country on his own. But after international pressure and massive street protests in South Korea, North Korea released only 39 of the 50 South Koreans on the flight. Seven passengers, including Hwang’s father, who was a TV producer, and four crew members were kept behind.
North Korea still insists those 11 chose on their own to stay there.
For Hwang, it was the start of a childhood waiting for his father, then 32, to come home. His mother told the distraught toddler that his dad had gone to America and would be returning for Christmas.
“But he never came back,” he said. In 2001, Hwang began actively working on his father’s case. North and South Korea had just started a limited series of family reunions for separated families.
Hwang was watching a story on the news about the reunions that showed one of the abducted flight attendants meeting her mother. He looked at his own daughter, then 2 years old, and “felt the pain of a parent being ripped away from their children.”
Hwang decided to start a campaign for his father’s release. He registered with the Korean Red Cross, which facilitates the family reunions. But the North Korean side insisted his father’s whereabouts could not be confirmed.
Hwang turned to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, which manages inter-Korean affairs, without any success.
Hwang didn’t give up. He turned to the United Nations, which highlighted his father’s story in a 2016 report on separated families.
Hwang still believes he’ll see his father again. A broker who helps North Korean refugees escape told Hwang recently that his dad — now 80 — is still alive and living in the city of Pyongsong. Hwang started a “Bring My Father Home” campaign last year.
Hwang said watching coverage of the North Korean delegation at the Olympics made him uneasy.
“A sense of resignation is what I feel,” he said. “I’m just concerned. I keep wondering how South Korea will be used by North Korea next.”
“The (South Korean) government is keeping its silence, and ... has become an inadvertent accomplice to these criminal acts.”
Hwang In-cheol