US POW's in N Korea???

I have this 83 year old friend that is a Korean war vet and he keeps up on happenings with his group and he related this story to me the other day...

According to one of his Marine Buddy's an Australian friend was recently in N Korea on an contract job when along side his bus he sees a group of workers in a ditch... The bus stops for him to look at the project and as he is looking around and making notes one of the guys comes over by him and talks on the down low.

He explains how he was a US solder and was captured during the Korean conflict and was kept as a POW after the end. The Aussie pretended to have his attention elsewhere but was taking detailed notes as the guy spoke to him. As he continued on he was told there were multiple US POW's still alive and being held used as slave labor, and the guy proceeded to give name, rank, serial number of himself as well as several other men in the group.

After this encounter he kept quiet about the incident, but as soon as he returned to Australia he turned his story and notes to the US consulate in Sidney, and nothing was done.

Has anyone else heard of this and if this is true why hasn't anything been done about it???

I believe it.. which is crazy.
One of my dad's old friends is a filmmaker. His uncle was one of the missing, presumed dead from Korea. He made an interesting film about the POWs left in North Korea. It is pretty sad.


http://www.billdumas.com/#/film/4532540271

Aren't we technically still at war with the PRK? And if so, what are we, NATO, or the UN to do about it? Their probably still considered Prisoners of War, and keeping them in a conflict is only common since. Further still, are not veterans of the Korean Conflict dieing off as is? By the time we retrieve them they'll have ten years tops to enjoy freedom before they kick the bucket. [Ouch, I know, that sounds so horrible, but its technically true if it all comes down to US/ '50s era UN nations still being in a technicality/war]

There probably are a few US service members still being held as POWs in PRK. That they would be anywhere near where a foreigner might see them, let alone get close enough to talk to one, is what strains believability.

PRK has no international advantage to continuing to keep POWs, but there are several scenarios where I can see tremendous internal advantage. Based on well-documented treatment of their own people (can't call them citizens if they cannot participate in the operation of the government, and "subject" implies royalty which flies in the face of communism - slaves is close but not quite right) anybody who might say or do anything against the exalted ruler and his horde of minions is trotted out at the appropriate time to scare the rest of the population by seeing what happens to dissidents and non-true believers. POWs "prove" that the evil USA is still trying to overthrow the peoples' paradise.

stay safe.

There are a few U.S. DEFECTORS living in North Korea. One of them came from my company in Korea in '81 or '82 after I PCSed.

I saw a documentary about them a few years ago. Usually they were losers who got into trouble and defected rather than go to Leavenworth.

A number of them worked playing American "villains" in North Korean propaganda movies, teaching English, and other work in support of North Korea's gangster regime and against the U.S.

Just because somebody SAYS he's a P.O.W. doesn't make it so.

Which do you think is going to gain you more sympathy?

"I was facing arrest for rape and defected to North Korea to escape justice. Now I'm having second thoughts."

or

"I'm a P.O.W. from the Korean War being held as a slave laborer."

I'm not saying it's impossible, merely unlikely. I can't see somebody surviving THAT long as a P.O.W. in North Korea. North Korean SOLDIERS barely get by.

DrakeZ07 said:

Aren't we technically still at war with the PRK?

Click to expand...

No, and we never were. UNSCR 84 is the most anyone could claim as a basis for our involvement in that conflict, and even that only specified that we ought to help the South. We haven't declared war since World War II (the last declaration of which occurred on June 5, 1942, against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania), and those declarations were formally terminated by treaties, over the course of ten years. Some would argue that we are obligated, by various treaties, to join various wars, but at the most we would no longer be "at war" as soon as the circumstances triggering those obligations were gone (e.g. an invasion of an ally ended). Even if you believe UNSCR 84 obligated us to join war against North Korea (I don't consider this even to be arguable), we haven't been "at war" since the attack was "repel"ed and "peace and security" were "restore"d.

While we certainly engaged in military combat against North Korea, I don't see that we were ever "at war" against them. We merely involved ourselves in some nonsense that was none of our business, and paid in money, lives, and liberty.

I was sent these story's so this is highly plausible!!!

http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/World/Story/A1Story20110728-291490.html


http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/05/us-korea-north-pows-idUSTRE6340H020100405

This story is no different than the claim that once we pulled our troops of of Vietnam in the mid 1970's that we no longer had a presence there. Many Vietnam vets who know the truth can tell you that we had an active presence into the early 1980's in Vietnam. Some were even witness to equipment being pushed off of aircraft carriers because it wasn't supposed to exist and it certainly wasn't supposed to be in Vietnam.

Unofficial or official wartime POW's being alive present in Korea as well as Vietnam is a very real possibility. Having them on enslavement camps where non-Koreans could see them, that's also plausible given the brazen behavior of the Korean government and military.