'49 Years of Forced Labor' Returned Korean War POW Han Byeong-su Passes Away

80 Returned POWs... Only 11 Survivors Left
President Yoon, Defense Minister Send Condolences... 8th Division Soldiers Pay Respects

Han Byung-su, an elder who was forcibly taken to North Korea for forced labor during the Korean War and later defected, passed away on the evening of the 8th due to old age. He was 92 years old, and with his passing, the number of surviving South Korean POWs in the country has decreased to 11.

According to the Ministry of National Defense on the 9th, Han was born in May 1931 in Hongcheon-gun, Gangwon Province. After enlisting in December 1951, he was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 21st Regiment, 8th Division. In June 1953, a month before the signing of the Armistice Agreement, he was captured and taken to the North, where he was forced to work for 49 years in the Hamgyongnam-do region, including the Geomdeok and Yongyang mines in Dancheon. It was only in May 2002, after he had passed seventy, that he was able to escape North Korea and returned to his homeland in September of the same year via China.

Shin Beom-cheol, Deputy Minister of National Defense, is paying his respects at the funeral hall of the late Han Byung-soo, a repatriated Korean War POW, on the 9th.
[Photo by Ministry of National Defense]

The funeral was held at the Hando Hospital funeral hall in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province. The funeral procession will take place at 11 a.m. on the 10th, and the remains will be interred at the National Seoul National Cemetery.

President Yoon Suk-yeol and Minister of National Defense Shin Won-sik sent wreaths to the deceased’s funeral hall, and Minister of National Defense Shin Beom-cheol personally visited the funeral hall that morning to console the bereaved family. Since his inauguration, President Yoon has sent wreaths to the memorials of four deceased South Korean POWs. Soldiers from the Army’s 8th Division, to which Han belonged during his lifetime, are also scheduled to pay their respects. A Ministry of National Defense official stated, "We will continue to provide appropriate honors and treatment befitting the merits of repatriated South Korean POWs."

Returning Korean War POW Elder Han Byung-su

Meanwhile, during the 1953 armistice talks, the United Nations Command estimated that about 82,000 South Korean soldiers were missing. However, the number of South Korean POWs ultimately handed over by the North was only 8,343. North Korea, which had initially boasted of capturing tens of thousands of POWs, drastically reduced the number to mobilize labor for post-war reconstruction and other purposes. Up until 2010, 80 repatriated South Korean POWs had defected, with only 11 survivors remaining.

According to data compiled by the National Intelligence Service in 2007 based on testimonies from defectors and others, it was estimated that 1,770 South Korean POWs were detained in North Korea at that time. Of these, 560 were alive, 910 had died, and 300 were missing. However, the government has not tracked survivors since 2011.

In particular, the Ministry of National Defense provides differential support payments by categorizing repatriated South Korean POWs according to the South Korean POW Repatriation Act enacted during the Kim Dae-jung administration, as detailed in this article. Among the 80, 70 were assigned the lowest grade, as even minimal cooperation for survival was interpreted as 'indirect hostile acts.'