The Unification Ministry reclassified the three who were omitted from the list after their abduction due to a lack of records.
A person walks past the Ministry of Unification sign at the Government Complex Seoul in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Sept. 3.
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Three crew members of a fishing boat abducted by North Korea in 1973 have been officially recognized as postwar abductees, 53 years after their capture.
A committee overseeing compensation and support for abduction victims classified the trio — Cho Min-cheol, Kim Yang-hoon and Kim Dong-ho — following an assessment, the Ministry of Unification said Monday, listed as abductees who have not returned.
The three were crew members of the Daeyeong, a fishing boat captured by North Korea in waters near Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea on Nov. 24, 1973.
The Daeyeong had long been excluded from official records of abducted vessels because little documentation of the boat or its fishing operations remained. The boat’s abduction came to light in 2003 when Kim Byeong-do, another crew member who was abducted, returned from North Korea.
After his return, Kim Byeong-do said there had been six crew members aboard the vessel at the time of the abduction. However, only three, including Kim, were officially recognized as abductees. The other three — who were recognized as abductees only Monday — were excluded from the government’s records due to insufficient evidence.
Last year, a group representing families of people abducted by North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean War obtained additional evidence concerning the three previously unrecognized crew members. Following a review, the Unification Ministry officially recognized them as abductees.
The ministry also recognized Cho’s younger sibling and other family members as victims of abduction under relevant laws and decided to provide 81 million won ($60,200) in compensation.
The North Korean flag flies over Kijong-dong village in Kaesong in a photo taken from the Aegibong Observatory in Gimpo, Gyeonggi, on Oct. 27.
NEWS1
For the other two abductees, the ministry plans to continue working with relevant agencies to locate their families.
With the latest recognition, the number of postwar abductees who have yet to return from North Korea has risen from 516 to 519.
Of those, 460 were fishing boat crew members, while the remainder included military personnel, police officers and passengers and crew members of a Korean Air aircraft hijacked to North Korea.
A total of 3,838 people have been recognized as abducted by North Korea since the signing of the Korean War Armistice Agreement in 1953.
Of those, 3,310 were repatriated, while nine returned after escaping from North Korea or through other means.
BY JEONG JAE-HONG [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.