Traditional Security Discourse and Minorities: Focusing on Korean War Abductees1
Yongmin Kim (Konkuk University)
Gi-Woong Jung (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)
I. Introduction
Regarding national security, there are inevitably ‘secured majority’ and ‘unsecured minority’ problems. Korea’s history includes experiences with colonial rule, independence, the division of the country and the Korean War—all in quite a short time. The Korean War abductees are a clear example of an ‘unsecured minority’. After the Korean War, the abduction issue was somewhat taboo for both Korean governments. Under the Cold War and competition system, both denied their existence and treated them as invisible people. Realistically, it is difficult to even define who the abductees are. Even after the end of Cold War, this issue has still not been resolved. The South Korean Park Geun-Hye government has only recently acknowledged their existence and is trying to find ways to compensate for their losses during the almost seventy years of modern South Korean history. Until the formation of this government’s special committee, we did not even know the clear number of abductees, and there is no serious academic research focused on this issue. That is the main reason why we are focusing on this particular issue on this paper. It has three aims: first, to provide an overall summary of the Korean War abduction issue. Until this moment, no previous research has focused on the number of abductees. intention, jobs. Therefore, we will try to sum up the issue and categorise the abductees. Second, we will outline the human security approach regarding the abduction issue as is a clear example of violating personal security. It is also a community security issue concerning the families left behind; in addition, it is a great failure of national security. Finally, based on our findings, we will try to find a solution for the ‘unsecured minority’ that traditional security discourse cannot provide. In the following sections we will approach these three aims one by one. We also clearly understand the
1 This is the very first draft of an unfinished article. Please do not quote without authors’ permission
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limitations of this paper because there is still a great amount of research going on; however, it is still worthwhile to sum up the present work for the very first time.
II. Literature Review on the Korean War Abduction Issue
What is the status of Korean War abductees in Korean history? First of all, I will try to summarise the Korean academic literature on this particular subject. Until the end of cold war, there was almost no research on or mention of the dispersed families, including Korean War abductees, in the Korean peninsula. Korean War abductees are not regarded the same as dispersed families because the South Korean government did not even know the exact number of abductees until the late 1990s. The first significant research article on this issue focused more on Korean War prisoners of war detained in North Korea, and Korean War abductees were only of secondary importance. (Seo 1998) However, after the initiation of the Kim Dae Jung government’s Sunshine Policy, relations between North and South Korea began to thaw, and under these circumstances, several articles on how to solve the problem of Korean War abductees were published. (Yun 2002, 2004) Some researchers sought solutions from Korean history, (Y. U. Kim 2004) and policies responding to the abduction issue (M. Kim 2004) or focused on this issue as a minority and human rights issue. (Y. D. Kim 2004) This tendency continued, even in Roh Mu Hyun’s government, because scholars researched the same topics repeatedly. (Oh 2006) Despite the good relations between North and South Korea, the abduction problem was abandoned by both governments because North Korea never admitted they kidnapped common South Korean people; they continually insisted that the abductees all came to North Korea of their own free will. Paradoxically, the Korean War abduction problem progressed politically after a conservative South Korean government came into power, even though it faced the worst relationship in history with North Korea because of the nuclear missile issue. It was first time the two Koreas discussed support legislation for abductees (Park 2009), and it came out that they defined the words ‘defection’ and ‘abduction’ differently (Lee 2010). Papers on the differences between these two terms in North Korea were published. (K. Kim 2010) Those researchers sought the reasons for the abductions (Park 2010; S. Lee 2013) and analysed the ways in which families were psychologically damaged by the tragedy (J. Kim 2011). They also suggested enforcing international human rights law (Jeh 2011) and determining what the governments should do to solve the problem. (Cho 2011) B. Kim (2012) explored the provisions in the Armistice Agreement for displaced civilians, and official reports by the Korean Institute for National Unification also mentioned the issue several
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times over the years. What we can understand from the literature produced during all these years is that it was only very recently that we South Koreans as a people focused on abductees, because these were overshadowed by prisoners of war or dispersed families and put off by South Korean governments because their dilemma was regarded as a minority issue.
But the Korean War Abductees Family Union (KWAFU), which has been active since 1951, compiled a list of abductees in 2001; therefore, we can no longer delay this issue. Fortunately, the current government has formed a special committee on this issue, and we urgently have to discuss it academically because the family members who can give testimony are getting older and passing away day by day. In the following section, I will summarise the activities of KWAFU and their circumstances as a minority,
III. The History of Korean War abductees Families as a Minority
The history of the Korean War abductees starts at the very end of the Korean War, since most of abductions happened during the period of 1950-1952. The first official list of abductees was released in 1952 by the Korean War Abductees Family Union (KWAFU), and the Seoul city council also disclosed a list of abductees who were residents of Seoul. Even during the Korean War, President Seung-man Rhee ordered the Minister of Defence to recover the abductees immediately after overtaking Pyongyang, the capital city of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Oct. 19, 1950 as a result of the Republic of Korea (ROK) and UN Forces' advance to the north. This is the very first official ROK document recognising the existence of the Korean War abductees. (Korean National Archives & Records Administration 1950) The National Police headquarters compiled a ‘List of People Abducted in the June 25 Conflict’ with 17,940 names. It clearly showed that the South Korean government knew about the abduction problem and wanted to solve it with the help of North Korea. However, the North Korean government has never admitted the people they took were actually abductees; it maintains that they all moved to North Korea voluntarily. The KWAFU’s definition of Korean War abductees reads: ‘The Korean War abductees are defined as the South Korean civilians who were forcibly taken in the entire area south of the 38th Parallel by the North Korean regime after its invasion to the South during the Korean War, and have died or are still being detained in the North.’ (http://www.kwafu.org/english/kidnap.php). The KWAFU’s database claims that there were actually at least 112,627 abductees — possibly more. From 1951, the original Korean War Abductee Family Association (KWAFA), also called the ‘Association of Families of Persons Kidnapped at the Time of
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the June 25th Incident’, was organised, and the South Korean (Seung-man Rhee) government, along with one million people, continually petitioned international organisations like the United Nations to heed the plight of the abductees. However, during the Cold War era there was very little the South Korean government could do, since North Korea never agreed to discuss the subject. Even after the Cold War, progress in finding abductees was difficult because of lack of proof. It was not until 2001, after North Korea admitted to abductions of Japanese citizens in 1999, that the trend changed. Family members left in Korea re-established the KWAFA under its new name: The Korean War Abductees Family Union (KWAFU) and received certification as an official NGO from the Ministry of Unification. Starting in 2001, KWAFU discovered several lists of abductees such as the ‘List of Displaced Civilians’ (7,034 persons, 1956), compiled by the Korean Red Cross; ‘Replies to the Inquiries on Welfare and Whereabouts of the Displaced Civilians’ (337 persons, 1957), compiled by the North Korean Red Cross; the ‘List of Seoul Municipality Victims’(4,616 persons, 1950), compiled by the Bureau of Statistics; the ‘List of the Korean War Abductees’(82,959 persons, 1952), compiled by the South Korean government; and the ‘List of the Abductees of June 25th Incidents’(17,940 persons, 1954), compiled by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Among these lists, most significant one for our research is the ‘List of the Korean War Abductees’ compiled by the South Korean government because it is official and contains the greatest number of abductees.
Government-level activities did not start until 2010 when the North Korean government finally admitted to kidnapping South Koreans, and when relations between the two Korean governments relationship worsened, the South Korean government promulgated Act No. 10190 (Official gazette No. 17223), the
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Court in Hague. The officers then met with Judge Kwon Oh-gon of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Mr Song Sang-hyun, the President of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November 2013 regarding the wartime civilian abduction issue as a form of continuing crime. What we can understand from the history of Korean War abductees is that they were ignored by both Korean governments and only had been spotlighted starting in 2010. However, ninety per cent of Korean War abductees have still not been officially recognised and are still in the blind spot of national security. Then has why this tragedy happened? Is there not enough effort by the interested parties to resolve this issue? The reality is different; there have been several efforts to solve these problems in past 60 years. First, there were efforts by the UN during the actual Armistice negotiations: the United States, which was in charge of the UN coalition, was well aware of abductions of South Korean citizens by North Korea and attempted to exchange abducted South Korean citizens for communist prisoners of war held by the UN on a one-to-one basis. However, the U.S. failed to use the term ‘abduction’ during the negotiations due to North Korea's strong opposition and the political need to quickly bring about an end to the war. Ultimately, the abductees were termed ‘displaced civilians’ and were not repatriated. Second, efforts by the South Korean government’s National Assembly established a committee aimed at repatriating abducted civilians in 1953 and sent a resolution it adopted to the UN. It also called on the government to take proactive measures such as creating lists of abductees. After Seoul was returned to the jurisdiction of UN forces and up until the mid-1950s, the government stated on numerous occasions that the abducted civilians should be released unconditionally. Three separate lists of wartime abductees were created after the war. Efforts were made to increase support on the international stage for repatriations when the foreign ministry gathered representatives from all parts of the government to hold a conference on the abductee issue right after the war. However, when North Korea began using well-known abductees in its propaganda and began sending young abductees to South Korea as spies, abductees’ family members in South Korea began to face discrimination because of their relatives. The one-million signature campaign for repatriating abductees, begun by the Chosun Il-Bo national daily on July 1, 1964, was signed on its first day by President Park Chung Hee. Later, right before the signatures were sent to the UN, President Park sent the newspaper a letter of thanks, saying the signatures represented the hopes of the entire country. However, when the South Korean petition was not accepted in the UN, President Park focused his time and energy on economic development instead. (KWAFU official document) Thirdly, there were efforts by the Red Cross: the South Korean Red Cross collected reports on 7,034 abductees from their families during a two-month period from June 1956. These reports were then used to obtain information on 337 abductees in 1957, a development that has come to be the only success in the abductee issue. The use of the term ‘displaced civilians’ allowed the North to inquire about the
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whereabouts of those civilians who had lived in the North but had later moved to the South of their own volition. Finally, there were efforts by the abductee association: in October 1950, the KWAFA created lists of abductees, submitted petitions to the national assembly, requested assistance on multiple occasions from UN military representatives participating in the armistice negotiations, sent a rescue team to Pyongyang to rescue abductees and staged rallies of thousands of family members of the abductees at Deok-su Palace (August 1953 and March 1954). The organisation also made successive requests for assistance from the UN and International Red Cross during those years. What we can understand is that these efforts have continually been ignored because of the stance of the North Korean government. The only notable achievement by the Family Union is the South Korean memorial museum at Imjingak Pavilion, which is soon to be built. There will be several exhibitions on Korean War abductees with their histories, keepsakes and lists of names. Here are some of examples provided by the KWAFU.
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IV. Moving Korean War Abductees from ‘Unsecured Minority’ to ‘Secured Majority’ Status
Then how we can move Korean War abductees from ‘unsecured minority’ to ‘secured majority’ status? Personally, we strongly suggest that we treat this issue as a non-traditional (human) security issue rather than a traditional national security issue. As we saw in Section III, abductees have had a very sad and painful history of being an unsecured minority, while every interested party tries to solve the problem within a traditional national security paradigm. What is the difference between human security and non-traditional security? To understand the meaning of ‘human security’ or ‘non-
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traditional security’, we must review previous studies on the topic. There are two significant models of human security: the Japanese model (Model J), with a broad focus, and the Canadian model (Model C), with a narrower range of focus (see Table 1). The differences between the two models are crucial to understanding the concept of human security, since most previous studies have applied one or the other of them.
Human Security Model Concept and Contents of Human Security Model
Model J (Japanese human security Wide: includes almost everything that threatens human perspective) security.
Includes both freedom from fear and freedom from want.
Model C (Canadian human Narrow: includes only serious threats to humanity. security perspective) Includes only freedom from fear (for example, terrorism), not freedom from want.
Table 1. A Comparison of the Japanese and Canadian Human Security Models
Model J is very closely connected to economic and socio-cultural rights and to the development agenda; in Model J, the traditional concept of security has limited meaning. This wide-ranging human security concept has its origin in the 1994 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Drawing on the UNDP report, Model J considers both ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’ as significant foundational concepts. (Evans, 2003) In Model J, use of military power is excluded. This model has four basic characteristics (global, anthropocentric, interdependent and early-stage
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preclusive) and seven important elements (economic, food, health, environment, personal, community and political). (Chun, 2004: 33) Model J applies the concepts contained in the Diplomatic Bluebook of 1999, in which the Japanese government claimed that
Human security comprehensively covers all the menaces that threaten human survival, daily life and dignity—for example, environmental degradation, violations of human rights, transnational organised crime, illicit drugs, refugees, poverty, anti-personnel landmines and other infectious diseases such as AIDS—and strengthens efforts to address these threats. As these are all cross-border issues, coordinated action by the international community will be important, as will linkages and cooperation among governments, international organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other parts of civil society. (www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/1999/II-3-a.html (14 June 2016))
By contrast, Model C is aligned with the limits of security articulated in the ‘2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’ (Yu, 2009). This model focuses on using the human security concept only in relation to particular political events and emphasises the importance of legitimate policy organisation. Model C encompasses only serious threats to human nature such as massacres, wars and racial crimes. These tenets follow the regulations of the United Nations Security Council.
A third view on human security, held by a group that is critical of the original concept, is that human security is an overstretched concept of security that is dangerous because of its potential to condone ‘disciplinary operations’ and purports to construct a ‘parsimonious’ theory of international relations. (Kang 2008: 199) Moreover, human security is an appropriate term for slogans and the expression of public sentiment but not as a research theme. This scepticism also rests on the fact that although many governments and non-governmental organisations have discussed the concept of human security for a long time, there is still no clear concept of what it means. Critics consider it as too broad and ambiguous to be regarded as an applicable theory.
Even if we acknowledge this criticism, the human security paradigm has value in today’s world, especially with this Korean War abduction issue. As we mentioned above among the seven human security elements (economic, food, health, environment, personal, community and political) the issue of the Korean War abductees is directly related to the three main elements of personal, community and political security and also indirectly violates the health security of connected family members. It is clearly shown that national security has never provided them enough protection even inside their own nation. They have endured many years of separation from their families without knowing whether beloved family members were alive or dead. Those family members also find it difficult to live in South Korean society, where people are suspicious that they are spies for North Korea. Therefore,
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even if is very late indeed, we need to give them personal, community, political and health security. Let us focus on these security issues one by one in detail.
First, on personal security, family members are the biggest victims in South Korean society. In spite of their hardships, they suffer several disadvantages under the South Korean government, which promotes an anti-communism stance based on the Red Scare. They accused the government of not treating them as normal separated families because the North Korean government never answered the requests of Korean War abductees’ relatives for some kind of non-official contact with North Korea. The South Korean government ignored their demands because it cannot find objective information on the conditions of abductions during the Korean War. Traditionally, the dilemma of abductees’ families is included in the issues of normal separated families. Therefore, we have to provide a new approach to solving this gap between the South Korean government and Family Union. This is why we need human security: under the current circumstances on the Korean peninsula, we can solve this problem only under international human rights law because knowing one’s own relatives and having news of their survival is a human right. Meeting family members and asking for their return to South Korea is normatively justified. This issue is a typical human security issue with human rights, and families have suffered for very long time. We all know the problem cannot be solved through national security paradigms and hard power.
Second, community security has almost same problems as personal security. As stated before, family members of abductees have suffered many disadvantages in South Korean society over the last sixty years. They had difficulties obtaining secure jobs because of the guilt-by-association system: anyone with family members in North Korea is considered guilty, even without any wrongdoing. It naturally harms the families’ community security, as you can easily imagine. It started as human rights issue, but during the Cold War era, it became a political national security issue between the two Korean governments. It is still not too late to bring them back into normal human rights we mean human security non-traditional security issue. Fortunately, the South Korean government abolished of the guilt-by-association system in 1980, but it still remained as a common social idea until early 1990s. Although it is very late, and we have entered the twenty-first century without solving this matter, we still need to compensate for the years of separation they have endured and pressure North Korea to act. Once again national security and hard power are not the solution, as we all know from our past experience.
Third and finally, there is political security. Under the current circumstances, we have no clear policy on the Korean War abductees. Basically this problem is a war crime; however, the South Korean government has neglected the abductees for almost sixty years. It was a political decision, and under
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the Cold War, there was no alternative: after the Cold War era ended Korean peninsula still remained under the Cold War paradigm — perhaps still. And since it enjoyed a good relationship with the North Korean government under the Sunshine Policy, the South Korean government did not want to irritate the North Korean government with this sensitive issue. Literally until 2010, Korean War abductees and their family members were not able to get any kind of political security from either of the Korean governments. To sum up, the abduction issue was a serious violation of human security, and we need to resolve it as soon as possible because family members who knew the abductees are very old and are dying every minute, even today.
V. Conclusion
As we argued above, after the Korean War, the abduction issue was somewhat taboo in both Korean governments. Under the Cold War and competition system, both Koreas denied their existence and treated them as invisible people. Realistically, it is even difficult to define who abductees are. Even after the end of Cold War this issue still not resolved to this day. We provided an overall summary of the Korean War abduction issue. Until this moment, no previous research has focused on the number of abductees. intention, jobs. Second, the human security approach shows that the abduction issue is a clear example of violating personal security. It is a community security issue concerning the families left behind and a great failure of national security. Finally, based on our findings, we are attempting find a solution to the problems of being an ‘unsecured minority’ that traditional security discourse cannot provide. However, we have started only recently; we well know our research and findings have limitations and do not have a proper or clear methodology. However, despite the limitations and difficulties in international relations surrounding the Korean peninsula, it is worthwhile to focus on this issue using a different approach rather than traditional national security. We have to give security to this ‘unsecured minority’ before it is too late. We all
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know it is better late than never.2
2 We apologize for not providing a bibliography, as we are still at work classifying huge numbers of references and materials Thank you. If you are interested please contact me at [email protected].
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