North Korea Keeps Forgotten POWs

When the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953, North Korea did not return tens of thousands of South Korean prisoners of war, despite the expectation of postwar exchanges. Instead, many of these men and their children spent decades in forced labor, especially in remote coal mines. Between 1994 and 2009, only 79 South Korean POWs managed to escape to the South and describe the conditions they had endured. Researchers also estimate that as many as 900 U.S. soldiers captured during the war may never have been repatriated, leaving their fates unresolved.

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