Korean war: Russian officials in North Korea to mark 70 years of armistice - BBC News

 

now officials from Moscow and Beijing

are the first known foreign visitors to

North Korea since the pandemic border

closure then Pyongyang to mocked 70

years since deciding of the Korean War

Armistice although it has largely held

it's never been replaced by a peace

treaty which means the two sides are

still technically at War it means tens

of thousands of South Korean prisoners

of War have been held captive in the

north since the early 50s a tiny number

have managed to escape but but most are

thought to have perished as our sole

correspondent G McKenzie reports

news that communist troops have invaded

Southern Korea for three years fighting

engulfed the Korean peninsula

in the 70 years since peace has eluded

it

a set of documents is signed by General

Harris the delicate Armistice signed in

1953 has never been replaced by a peace

treaty

and tens of thousands of captured South

Korean soldiers have never been returned

is one of the very few who managed to

plot his own Escape

he lost his fingers not to war but to

the 54 years he was forced to work in a

North Korean coal mine

we gave our entire youths to that Coal

Mine we had no rights you must have

missed home terribly

who wouldn't I was all alone and scared

I could face a meaningless death at any

moment

at what point did you give up hope that

anybody was going to come for you

North Korea was saying it didn't have

any prisoners of War

and so nobody wanted to question it it

seemed as if the South Korean government

didn't want to make any efforts to

retrieve us

south and north and North Korea are

marking 70 years since the armistice

but for the prisoners of war the battle

is not over they were branded outcasts

in North Korea left to perish in the

mines few if any are still alive

but their children remain s

spent her childhood being beaten at

school punished by association

she was six when her father was killed

in a gas explosion at a North Korean

mine

only after his death did she find out

he'd been a South Korean soldier

in that moment I hated him I blamed him

so much for making us all suffer she

says

she too decided to escape North Korea

and the misery of being an outcast how

do you feel about him now

now I respect him and try so hard to

remember him I feel different to other

North Korean defectors because I'm the

proud daughter of a South Korean War

veteran she tells me

by the time Lee arrived home already an

old man his parents had passed away

believing their son had been killed in

action

the absence of peace between the North

and South have left Lee and the families

of these soldiers struggling to find

peace of Their Own

Gene McKenzie BBC News Seoul

well I spoke to a young goo Kim who's

the principal researcher at the East

Asia Institute and he told me the

importance of the visits by to North

Korea by Russia and China

it proves that the after the war in

Ukraine the authoritarian regimes

strengthened their relationships and

strength relations to boost our their uh

forced to fight against it so-called

like-minded groups countries that led by

the United States so I think it still

proves that looks like the cold war is

not ended on Korean pinschler

of course recently North Korea has been

testing many missiles it's been a while

since their last nuclear tests but its

military capabilities are definitely

expanding How concerned are ordinary

South Koreans

well you we usually say it's a game

changer if North Korea has both the

miniature nuclear warheads and the

solely few missiles and that's why we

worry about whether North Dakota could

develop ICBM is also it's only few

missiles which could launch at the U.S

continent but that is already happening

in South Korea it actually happened in

2019 when North Korea this kn23 missiles

which is liquid I mean solely few

missiles that can carry nuclear warheads

that which can fly up to 600 kilometers

which can hit any part of the South

Korea at any time if they want so uh now

we have to say that North Korea has

capability to launch a tag on any part

of South Dakota with nuclear warheads

and this is terrifying indeed

of course I remember back in 2018 during

the Trump Kim Summit something like 70

percent of the South Korean public were

eager to unite the two countries do you

think that has changed since the U.S

Pyongyang talks have stalled

is actually that was the highest point

uh after we did a survey on people's you

know perception about the unification

and now uh according to the most recent

uh data uh by the uh collected by the

Korean Institute for National

unification

um now 53 percentage of people support

for unification so this the number is

the lowest uh ever since we conducted

survey and if we break down uh these

responses by age groups like uh the

people who support importance

unification drops from 66 to 39 percent

if age group moves from 60s to 20s so it

looks like more young people don't want

to be United