The Captain's Chair - Winter 1997
When Kim Hyong U, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations,
extended an invitation to me to visit the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK) in December, I was intrigued by what I considered an
unprecedented opportunity to discuss the fates of the more than 8000
American servicemen who disappeared at the end of the Korean War.
Those of us involved in the ongoing effort to uncover the truth about
abandoned U. S. servicemen have known for years that the answers to the
fates of the 8000 POW/MIAs from Korea and the 2000 POW/MIAs from
Vietnam lie in the former Soviet Union and in the nations that participated
in the transfer of American POWs to the USSR at the end of both wars. And,
we have hoped that some day those nations could be persuaded that release
of information about POW transfers would serve their national interests.
As new explosive information leaks from the former USSR, and as North
Korea, without her former allies, becomes more desperately in need of
aid, our hope is that the North Koreans will provide answers that can
eventually lead to answers from Vietnam, as well. Because of the
passage of time, the U. S. government might more readily admit to official
mishandling of information about missing Americans from the Korean
War and this admission could lead to official disclosure of the
abandonment of american POWs from the Vietnam War.
Several recent events have brought the POW/MIA issue once again to
the front pages of America's newspapers. In April 1996, after repeated
Associated Press requests, a January 1955 document was finally
released by the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and this AP article
appeared in The Washington Post:
"Less than two years after the Korean war, a high-level Soviet defector
(Yuri A. Rastovorov) told White House officials that American prisoners
of war in North Korea had been taken secretly to siberia to be exploited
for Soviet intelligence purposes, according to a newly declassified U. S.
government document."
The Post article quotes Retired Army Colonel Philip Corso, a military aide to
President Eisenhower who conducted the interrogation of Rastovorov.
"In telephone interviews in 1994 and 1995, Corso recalled in detail his
encounter with rastovorov and said the defector told him several hundred
American POWs had been sent to Siberia in rail cars during the war.
Corso has maintained that the Eisenhower Administration chose not to
force the issue with Moscow out of concern that a confrontation might
escalate into all-out war."
In September 1996, the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel heard
riveting testimony from Colnel Corso and from General Jan Sejna, a
high-ranking Czech defector now with the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Both witnesses confirmed that "hundreds of U. S. POWs"
were transferred
to the former USSR from Korea and Vietnam and were used as "guinea pigs in
grisly experiments on the effects of radiation and biological weapons,"
according to The Washington Times, September 18, 1996. Colonel Corso also stated
that he blamed the Soviet
Union for "Nazi-style experiments." He testified that "the
brainwashing
and atrocities against American prisoners were conscious acts of Soviet
policy."
Three POW/MIA activists were among the ten persons who travelled to
Pyongyang in December 1996 to discuss business ventures and deliver
humanitarian aid. Although we were there for different reasons, by the
time we reached Pyongyang we were united in our desire to convey
to the North Koreans our concern about missing Americans.
The first day, the three of us who had come to talk about POWs were taken
to view the mammoth monuments honoring Kim Il-sung, the "Great
Leader." the following day, we met with Li Hyong Chol, Director of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who had assumed control of the POW/MIA
issue. This transfer of control from the Ministry of the Interior indicated
to us that POW information is now negotiable, and we seized the
opportunity to present the foreign Affairs Minister with names of missing
Americans and to tell him about the renewed U. S. media and congressional
interest in the POW transfers. The North Koreans denied having any
knowledge about the fates of missing Americans and, when the meeting
became confrontational, we canceled the next day's meeting and returned
to our hotel. After four hours of waiting in our rooms, the officials came
and took us to their Army Museum, where we located information about
three missing Americans to pass along to the U. S. government.
The next day, after several tedious hours of negotiation, we presented the
foreign Affairs Minister with news articles demonstrating the renewed
interest in the U. S. and watched the other officials take copious notes.
We offered business opportunities in exchange for information about
the POW transfers and urged them to be forthcoming. The next day we
flew to Beijing and home to the United States.
R. Cort Kirkwood, reporting on the September Military Personnel
Subcommittee hearings for Human Events, October 25, 1996, relates the
testimonies of General Sejna and Colonel Corso, as well as documents
which confirm the transfer of American POWs from Korea to other
countries. Kirkwood says in his article:
"The question many Americans may have is what this all means.
Dornan's chief investigator, Al Santoli, who is investigating CIA
personnelwho may have obstructed the Pentagon's efforts to bring
out the truthsays (the documents) are significan because they
prove American officialsknew the Soviets were kidnapping
Americans...
"The full truth may yet emerge, but not without a fight from those who
fear its most chilling implication: somewhere, a longforgotten American
fighting man may long to come home, and for half a century, people in
our own government have known it, and suppressed the information."
Those of us who travelled to North Korea are well aware that our own
government may not really want confirmation of the POW transfers from
the DPRK, but North Koreans know that we are a government "of the
people." As private U. S. citizens, were were able to convince them that
they can preempt not only their former ally, the USSR, but also their former
enemy, the United States, and release information about the POWs in
exchange for business opportunities and the gratitude and goodwill of
the American people? Time will tell.
