Mick Hartley

A new report from the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea gives a figure of over 180,000 for those abducted by Pyongyang over the past decades. From the press release (posted at One Free Korea):

The report, three years in the making, is based on numerous sources never before published in English, detailing how people of at least twelve nationalities have been abducted from fourteen countries around the world. It features satellite imagery of where many of these abductees have lived (and may still live) and where they have been forced to work for the North Korean regime.

This report, unlike others that presume little is known about the abductions, sets out the massive amount of information that can be compiled by comparing testimony from former abductees, former operatives of the North Korean regime, and former agents who collaborated with the regime.

In light of these details, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea explains how the abductions were carried out, how the victims were treated in North Korea, how the regime used the abductees to carry out its espionage objectives, and how the regime organized itself bureaucratically to implement Kim Jong-il’s directives to abduct foreign nationals and exploit their knowledge and abilities.

As with all Committee reports, this report provides policy recommendations on how to implement an international strategy to raise the issue of abductions with North Korea both bilaterally and multilaterally, and pursue legal recourse.

The report is the result of extensive coordination with organizations that focus on North Korean abductions in Tokyo and Seoul, as well as US, Japanese, and South Korean officials. 

If the figure seems remarkably large, that's because they've included prisoners not returned after the Korean War, and thousands of ethnic Koreans lured back from Japan in the late 50s and early 60s. From the Daily NK:

The report, written in order to tell “the full story” of North Korea’s long history of abductions, urges related governments to extend their efforts to investigate cases of abduction, demand the return of abductees and seek restitution for their suffering, and suggests the forming of an international coalition of governments to address the issue.

“It is incumbent on concerned people around the world to develop creative solutions and pursue all international and domestic mechanisms they can find to publicize the scope of these crimes and urge North Korea to respect the rights of its captives,” the report asserts.

Most controversially, it also demands that the North Korean government be returned to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, noting that, “The Japanese government and abductees’ families’ organizations from South Korea and Japan were strongly opposed to North Korea’s removal from the list, arguing that holding abductees is a continuing, persistent act of terror.” 

Among a litany of tales of abduction, the report recalls how 82,000 South Koreans were forced to move to North Korean territory during the Korean War and how a further 93,000 ethnic Koreans were lured into returning there from Japan as part of the ‘Homecoming Project’ of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

BBC report here.