On Thursday, former prisoners of war (POWs) who had escaped North Korea sent an open letter to Elizabeth Salmon, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights. The letter urged her to press the South Korean government to address the ongoing issue of military POWs.
The letter, signed by all six surviving POWs—Lee Sun-woo, Lee Dae-bong, Kim Jong-soo, Yoo Young-bok, Choi Gi-ho, and Ko Gwang-myeon—outlined four specific demands for the government.
These demands included: establishing a Military POW Investigation Committee, similar to the one for wartime abductees, to produce a comprehensive report and list of findings; designating November 26 as Military POW Remembrance Day, marking the 1994 return and discharge of Lieutenant Cho Chang-ho; recognizing February 17 as North Korean Human Rights Promotion Day, commemorating the release of the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report on North Korean human rights; and creating a special medal for military POWs or awarding them military commendations, akin to the U.S. Prisoner of War Medal.
Since Lieutenant Cho’s return in 1994, 80 military POWs have made it back to South Korea, but only six remain alive today.
The letter expressed gratitude to Rapporteur Salmon for her inquiries to North Korea last November regarding amnesty and her call for justice for all war prisoners and missing civilians, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the Korean War’s outbreak.
The full text of Salmon’s inquiry to North Korea, concerning the 80th Anniversary of the Workers’ Party founding, was made public on the UN’s website the previous day.
The inquiry also sought additional information about North Korean defectors Kim Cheol-ok, Kim Jung-wook, Kim Guk-ki, and Choi Chun-gil, who were forcibly repatriated from China—cases that the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) deemed arbitrary detention in 2024. As of now, North Korea has not responded to these inquiries.