The Korean War is often characterized as the “forgotten war.” Just about all the books and articles I’ve read on the subject of Korean War contain those words, and quite frankly, I think using this kind of phrase for a war that has impacted so many lives and continue to do so to this day, is pure nonsense.

Forgotten by whom, I ask? It certainly is not forgotten by the relatives of the 4 million or so people, military and civilian, who died in the war. The more than 10 million people who have lost contact with their families due to the separation of the North and the South have not forgotten about the war.

I certainly didn’t forget about the war, although I was just 4 years old when the war began and 7 when it ended. Notwithstanding my limited war experience seen through the eyes of a young boy, I have witnessed enough destruction and mayhem to know that this war that took place 65 years ago was a catastrophe.

What I had lived through is a piece a cake, though, compared to the South Korean prisoners of war who were captured by the North Korean army and taken to North Korea. These South Korean soldiers were supposed to be released back to South Korea in the POW exchange after the war, per the terms of the truce. However, the North Korean army kept them, about 70,000 of them. They were not returned home, according to the official explanation by North Korea, because “they elected to stay in the North.” Voluntarily.

That was North Korea’s official line in 1953 when the truce was signed, and remained so for decades to come. In 1994, a former POW by the name of Lt. Cho Chang-ho escaped from North Korea and shed light on the reality of the “voluntarily stay.” He had been held in captivity for over 40 years, working in coal mines. He published his story entitled “A Dead Man’s Journey Home,” in which he recounts his life in North Korea as a prisoner. More former POWs followed him home to South Korea, 78 of them, and of those who made it back to South Korea, 67 former POWs are still alive in South Korea as of 2013, according to Thomas Chung, chairman of Korean War POW Affairs of Los Angeles.

Cho was assigned to the notorious coalmine named Ah-O-Ji along with 500 other prisoners of war and political prisoners. The job didn’t come with masks to protect their lungs, nor changes of clothes, nor blankets, nor showers, nor tooth brushes. Cho didn’t brush his teeth for 12 years, and one day, all of his teeth fell out all at once.  

In a book entitled “A Bell Without Echoes” Chung quotes a memorandum written by S.P. Suzdalev, the Soviet Ambassador to North Korea in May 1953. It states, “Our Korean comrades preferred to keep a large number of South Korean prisoners of war, using them for various kinds of hard work in North Korea and ignoring their desire to return to their families … ”

The head of First Far Eastern Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry Fedorenko wrote a letter to his superior, Foreign Minister Molotov, on Dec. 3, 1953, over four months after the armistice had been signed. In it, Fedorenko summarized the reports by Susdalev, “13,094 prisoners of war from Syngman Rhee’s troops eligible for repatriation and 6,430 men serving in the KPA were being detained in North Korea. The others were being employed in various jobs in the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Railways.”

These documents from the former Soviet archives corroborate the testimonies by Cho and other former POWs. Although the statistics on the number of the POWs vary, their harrowing stories of the war that never ended for them are heart wrenching.

South Korean Ministry of Defense estimates that there are 560 POWs surviving in North Korea today. However, the North Korean government refuses to acknowledge their existence. The State Security agents of North Korea would know for sure because they keep the POWs under tight surveillance, but the agents are not talking. 

The secret is out, though. Now in their 80s and 90s, the old soldiers are managing to brave their way back home, motivated by their dire wish to come home and be buried there, the country to which they have given their lives. The thought of going home has kept them alive all these years. 

Some of them are fortunate. They finally got their discharge papers from their old unit, wearing their full dress uniform in a discharge ceremony, after 60 plus years, bringing resolution to their lifelong struggles as a forgotten soldier.

The war is over for them now. Finally. However, they will not forget about the war, the war some people call “the forgotten war.”

By John. H. Cha

John H. Cha, an award-winning translator of Korean literature into English, lives in Oakland, California.  — Ed.