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 Please do not quote without authors’ permission - 1 - limitations of this paper because there is still a great amount of research going on; however, it is still worthwhile to sum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 - 2 - 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 - 3 - 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 <Act on Investigating Abduction by North Korea during the Korean War and Restoring Honour of the Victims> on March 26, 2010.