Thousands of people, possibly millions, have vanished from memory in North Korea – but there’s a group of activists, lawyers and cyber experts in Seoul who are building a digital database to locate them and, one day, hold someone accountable ft.com/content/c93451…
Talking to the FT, Lee Han-byeol recalls her favourite memory of her brother, who was apprehended trying to flee North Korea – the last certain sighting of him. ‘He really adored me. I hope I can see his face again.’ ft.com/content/c93451…
North Korea’s mass disappearances date back to the country's beginnings. During the months-long occupation by the north in 1950, 90,000 South Koreans are estimated to have been abducted – some for slave labour, others for their specialist skills ft.com/content/c93451…
Women have been taken as brides for the few foreign men in the country; local women, raised with xenophobic propaganda, were repelled by foreigners. Some women abducted from Thailand and Romania were forced into marriage with detained American soldiers ft.com/content/c93451…
The Transitional Justice Working Group is building a database of records, photos and testimonies to archive every missing person. For some families, even the most basic scraps of information — names, dates, burial sites — are as much as they can hope for ft.com/content/c93451…
The TJWG is also mapping North Korea's secret prisons, execution sites and mass graves in the hope of using the data, if the Kim regime falls, to bring perpetrators to justice ft.com/content/c93451…
Some argue that by publicising individual families and stories, the TJWG’s work endangers people still living in North Korea, who might suffer reprisals. For others, the danger lies in powerful North Koreans realising how change would be very bad for them ft.com/content/c93451…
For many families, who no longer hope for a relative to be returned, or even that they’ll be able to exhume their body, it’s enough for a disappearance to be officially noted. Tap here to read more about the search for North Korea’s missing ft.com/content/c93451…
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