[3][4] According to testimonies by remaining family members, most abductions were carried out by North Korean soldiers who had specific names and identification in hand when they showed up at people's homes.
[7] During wartime, North Korea kidnapped South Koreans to increase its human capacity for rehabilitation after the war.
It recruited intelligentsia who were exhausted in North Korea and kidnapped those needed for post-war rehabilitation, technical specialists, and laborers.
"[10] In the case of post-war abductees, Yoichi Shimada,[11] a Fukui University professor in Japan, states that North Korea appeared to abduct foreign citizens to: These six patterns are not mutually exclusive.
"[12] Further, better-educated people could be employed by the institutions responsible for waging propaganda campaigns against the South in, say, their broadcast facilities.
After the Armistice in 1953, North Korea refused the release of South Korean wartime abductees despite a provision allowing civilian abductees to return home in Article III of the Korean War Armistice Agreement,[15] a document signed by representatives from the United States, North Korea, and China.
The former husband of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota, himself a suspected abductee from the South, was allowed to meet his South Korean mother in 2006, but Yokota's parents called the meeting a publicity stunt by North Korea, meant to isolate his daughter from her Japanese family, as the man has now remarried a native North Korean and has a son with her.
[21] In contrast with the official policies, the 2014 United Nations Report of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the DPRK states that the South Korean government has not been willing to raise the issue with North Korea, thinking of the abductions in political rather than humanitarian terms.
Further, the report says that "Well over 200,000 persons who were taken from other countries to the DPRK may have potentially become victims of enforced disappearance, as defined in the Declaration for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance" and "Most post-war abductee family members that have applied to attend a separated family reunion have received notification at the life status verification stage of the process, that their loved one has since deceased or their life status cannot be verified.
By this law, on October 16, 2007, the South Korean government formed the "Committee for the Compensation of the Victims of Abduction to the North."
Owing to the special situation of wartime, the exact number of Korean War abductees is difficult to determine.
[35] In February 1978, South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee and her film director husband Shin Sang-ok were kidnapped in Hong Kong and taken to Pyongyang.
[36][37][38] In the 1990s most abductions of this sort took place in China, and their victims were political activists, missionaries, and real or suspected South Korean spies.
North Korean abductions have not been limited to northeast Asia and many documented abductees have been kidnapped while abroad, making the issue of serious concern to the international community.