Tag: hijacking

Introduction

Cold War era South Korea was host to many deadly and bizarre incidents.  On March 31, 1970, Japan Airlines flight 351, a 727 aircraft flying from Tokyo to Fukuoka was hijacked and eventually flown to Seoul adding to the long list of bizarre incidents involving South Korea.

From the April 1, 1970 Stars & Stripes

This hijacking known as the “Yodogo Hijacking” in Japan, would be the second one in four months involving South Korea.  On December 12, 1969 a civilian South Korean airplane was hijacked and flown across the DMZ by North Korean agents.  This time the JAL aircraft was not hijacked by North Korean agents, but instead communist sympathizers from the left wing Japanese Red Army Faction.

The “Yodogo Hijacking”

As the aircraft was flying to the city of Fukuoka in southern Japan, nine members of the Japanese Red Army, known as “Sekigun” in Japanese, wielded samurai swords and pipe bombs to take control of the plane with its 122 passengers and 7 crew members.  It is amazing to think that airline security was so lax back then that this many weapons could be smuggled on to the plane.  After seizing the plane the Red Army Faction, composed of students ages 16 to 27, tied up all the passengers to their chairs.  They originally planned to fly the plane directly to Pyongyang, but allowed it to land at Itazuke Airbase outside of Fukuoka once they learned from the pilot, Captain Shinji Ishida that the plane did not have enough fuel to fly to Pyongyang.

The hijackers had mistakenly thought the plane could fly all the way to Havana and were shocked to learn the plane could not even fly across the Pacific much less to Cuba.  In need of fuel, the hijackers agreed to release 10 women, 12 children, and one elderly male passengers in return for enough fuel to fly to North Korea.  From Fukuoka they planned to fly to Pyongyang and then figure out a way to get to their ultimate destination of Cuba.

From the April 1, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper

The Ruse

The plane spent a total of five hours on the ground at Fukuoka before lifting off again to fly to North Korea.  As the plane flew towards the DMZ it took warning fire from ROK air defense batteries and was escorted by fighter jets to Kimpo Airport at Seoul in attempt to make the hijackers think they were in North Korea.  To continue the ruse, authorities in South Korea also decorated Kimpo International Airport to look like an airport in North Korea.  They did this by removing all South Korean flags and flying North Korean ones instead and placing placards welcoming the hijackers to North Korea.  They even had personnel at the airport dressed in communist uniforms.  Like I said before bizarre things happen in South Korea.

After the plane landed Korean Airlines official Chung Man-jin approached the JAL aircraft and over a megaphone welcomed the hijackers to Pyongyang.  The hijackers yelled back down at Chung through the pilot’s window that they believed they were in Seoul.  The ruse was failing because they saw no pictures of Kim Il-sung posted anywhere.  ROK authorities then quickly got a picture of Kim Il-sung posted for the hijackers to see.  After six hours of negotiations the ROK authorities gave up on the ruse after the hijackers spotted a US Northwest Airlines plane parked on the tarmac.

From the April 1, 1970 Stars & Stripes

The Negotiations

After giving up on the ruse, ROK authorities began negotiations with the hijackers.  The negotiations were high contentious as the hijackers threatened to blow up the plane multiple times.  It wasn’t until the Japanese Transportation Vice Minister Shinjiro Yamamura agreed to be a replacement hostage that progress was made.  A deal was made where a tire that had popped during the landing was repaired and  the plane refueled in return for releasing 50 hostages.

From the April 5, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper

After the release of 50 hostages Mr. Yamamura would then board the plane to become a replacement hostage.  Once Yamamura was on board another 50 hostages were released.  It can’t be understated how brave this decision by Yamamura was because some of the hostages from the December 1969 Korean Airlines hijacking never came home.  Plus the crew from the USS Pueblo had been held hostage for nearly a year in North Korea and were tortured before being released.  Mr. Yamamura when he volunteered knew that he risked never going home again and being tortured, yet he went anyway.

From the April 4, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper

Surprisingly when Mr. Yamamura boarded the plane the hijackers were quite congenial with him.  For example one of the hijackers playfully pretended to stop Yamamura from running away from the plane.  Another hijacker carried his luggage on to the plane and they had a final wave and farewell before entering the plane.  The hijackers were apparently quite congenial with the passengers as well.  Two of the last hostages to leave were Americans Herbert Brill, a Pepsi-Cola executive and Reverend Daniel MacDonald.  When both left the plane they were smiling and shaking hands with the hijackers before departing.

Escape to North Korea

On April 3, 1970, JAL 351 with the nine hijackers, the three crew members, and the Transportation Vice Minister flew from Kimpo Airport, across the DMZ, and landed at Mirim Field outside of Pyongyang.  When they landed in North Korea the hijackers exited the plane and struck karate poses in excitement of what they had done.  They were then treated as heroes by the ruling Kim Il-sung government and given political asylum in North Korea.  Fortunately for the hostages they were treated well by the Kim regime and after some initial stalling, they allowed the plane and the hostages to fly back to Tokyo on April 5th.

From the April 5, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper

Historical Japanese news footage of the JAL 351 hijacking at Fukuoka and Kimpo Airport can be seen in the below video.  Additionally footage of Shinjiro Yamamura walking into the airplane at Kimpo followed by the release of the passengers can be seen:

Who Were the Hijackers?

Most of the hijackers were students from Doshisha or Kyoto University which were the two top universities in the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto.  Eight of the students were leftist nobodies, except for one student, Moriaki Wakabayashi.  Wakabayashi was the bass player for a popular Doshisha University based underground rock band called Les Rallizes Denudes.

From the April 5, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper

The band was formed by Takashi Mizutani who was a studying sociology and French literature at the time.  His French literature background is where the name of the band, that he was the lead singer for, came from.  Takashi was offered to participate in the hijacking, but declined to become involved.  The band would have eventually faded off into obscurity if Wakabayashi had not helped to hijack JAL 351.  After the hijacking the band remained together for many years afterwards.  You can listen to a sampling of their music by watching the below video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=664&v=L-oS–60eLA

Life in North Korea

After initially arriving in North Korea the hijackers may have been treated as heroes, but their ultimate goal of traveling on to Cuba was denied to them.  From the Kim regime perspective letting them travel on to Cuba would be embarrassing because the perception would be that North Korea was not good enough for them.  North Korea was after all sold as being the “worker’s paradise”, thus the hijackers were forced to stay in North Korea.

Interestingly the mastermind of the hijacking, did not take part in the actual operation.  His name was Takaya Shiomi.   He was arrested in Japan and sentenced to 20 years in prison.  He was released from prison in 1989 and worked as a lowly paid parking garage attendant.  After his release he joined the anti-US movement in Okinawa and wrote several books about the Red Army Faction.  He died in Tokyo in 2017 of heart failure.

The 9 hijackers on the other hand were forced to settle into life in North Korea.  One of the things the hijackers eventually wanted to make life more bearable in North Korea was to have wives.  There was no chance of them being given North Korean wives because of the racial ideology of the Kim regime that promotes the importance of keeping the Korean bloodline pure.  Because of this they worked on encouraging Japanese women with their same leftist ideology to defect to North Korea.  Incredibly they were very successful with five Japanese women traveling to North Korea in 1992 to marry the hijackers.

It is unknown what jobs all the hijackers have held in North Korea, but something they are believed to be involved in was helping with the abduction of Japanese nationals abroad.  It is believed that the Korean Workers Party in North Korea was using the hijackers to help create a Japanese revolution based on Kim Il-Sung’s doctrine.  Two of the hijackers that were allowed to travel abroad were arrested.  The youngest hijacker, Yasuhiro, Shibata was only 16 years old when he participated in the hijacking.  In 1985 he was sent to Japan to help raise money for the Red Army Faction.  Shibata was able to operate in Japan for three years before being arrested in 1988.

From the May 12, 1988 Stars & Stripes newspaper.

Shibata was eventually tried and sentenced to 5 years in prison.  One of the things that authorities learned from Shibata was that one of the hijackers, Yoshida Kintaro died of illness in Pyongyang in 1985.

Another hijacker Yoshimi Tanaka was arrested on the Cambodia-Thai border by Cambodian authorities. He was caught after a high-speed car chase across the country after Cambodian and US Secret Service agents were tipped off by an anonymous tip that Tanaka and North Korean diplomats were smuggling millions of counterfeit US dollars into Thailand.

From the April 6, 1996 Stars & Stripes newspaper.

Tanaka was deported to Thailand where he was acquitted of counterfeiting, but deported to Japan to face punishment for his role in the JAL 351 hijacking.  He received a 12-year jail sentence from the Japanese court.  Tanaka would never see freedom again since he died of liver cancer in 2007 while still serving his prison sentence.  He was 58 years old.

From the June 25, 1999 Stars & Stripes newspaper. 

While he was in jail Japanese authorities learned from Tanaka that another hijacker Takamaro Tamiya died in 1995.  Tanaka’s death brought the number of hijackers remaining in North Korea to five.  Over the years the hijackers requested to return to Japan, and wanted to open negotiations with the Japanese government to surrender if they did not do jail time.  The Japanese government has so far expressed no interest in giving immunity to the hijackers.  In 2001 and 2004 the Japanese government did allow various wives and children of the hijackers to return to Japan.  In 2014, Japanese journalists were able to visit the “Japanese Village” in North Korea and interview the remaining hijackers.

Japanese Village in North Korea

What they found was that the village which was once luxurious, has since decayed, but is still quite nice by North Korean standards.  The hijackers even have email access and their own satellite TV dish.  There is currently only 4 hijackers remaining in the village since one of them Takeshi Okamoto is believed to have been killed with his wife while trying to flee North Korea.

The four remaining “Yodo-go” hijackers being interviewed by the media in Pyongyang
(From left to right: Kimihiro Uomoto, Takahiro Konishi, Shiro Akagi, Moriaki Wakabayashi)
(September 2004) (Photo: Kyodo Press)

Here is a quick summary of the fate of all nine of the JAL 351 hijackers:

1. Takahiro Konishi – Still in North Korea
2. Shiro Akagi – Still in North Korea
3. Moriaki Wakabayashi – Still in North Korea
4. Kimihiro Uomoto – Still in North Korea
5. Yasuhiro, Shibata – Arrested in Japan in 1988 after traveling to Japan on a false passport to raise money for the Red Army.  Was sentenced to 5 years in jail.
6. Yoshimi Tanaka – Arrested in Cambodia in 2000 trying smuggle counterfeit US dollars.  Died in 2007 of liver cancer while serving a 12-year jail sentence in Japan.
7. Takamaro Tamiya – Died in 1995
8. Yoshida Kintaro – Died in 1985
9. Takeshi Okamoto – Believed killed trying to flee North Korea with his wife

Conclusion

The hijacking of JAL 351 was the first hijacking by the Japanese Red Army Faction and began a nearly two decade long run of terrorism committed by the left wing group.  The most notable was the Lod Airport massacre in Israel in 1972.  Three members of the Japanese Red Army were trained by Palestinian terrorists to conduct an attack that left 26 people dead and 80 more injured.  The only Red Army terrorist that survived the attack, Kozo Okamoto was the brother of JAL 351 hijacker Takeshi Okamoto.  The last deadly attack by the Red Army Faction occurred in 1988 when they bombed a USO nightclub in Naples, Italy killing five people.

Fortunately for the passengers of JAL Flight 351, the terrorists that took them hostage did not resort to deadly force.  The responsible actions by the Japanese and ROK authorities, even though the ruse at Kimpo Airport failed, did manage to ultimately get all the hostages and even the plane returned to Japan.      Though not all the JAL 351 hijackers have been captured, they have in a way experienced their own confinement in North Korea for the rest of their lives.  Fortunately with the advances in aviation security such a hijacking should never happen again, though it would be fun to see ROK authorities try to disguise Incheon International Airport as a North Korean airfield.

Introduction

There has been some strange incidents over the years involving the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), but one of the weirdest was when a hijacked Chinese airliner crossed over the DMZ on May 5, 1983 and landed at the US Army base Camp Page.  This was the first successful hijacking of a Chinese plane that ultimately ended up leading to the thawing of relations between South Korea and China.

Example of a CAAC Trident Jet that was hijacked. 

The Hijacking

The hijacked plane was a British made Trident jet that was part of China’s state owned airline called the Civilian Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).  The plane CAAC Flight 296 was making a routine domestic flight between Shenyang in northeast China and Shanghai with 96 passengers and 9 crew members on board when it was seized by 6 hijackers.  The hijackers were composed of five men and one woman who were armed with pistols and led by a man named An Weijian.  They used their weapons to blast open the door to the cockpit where during a skirmish for control of the plane a total of eight shots were fired wounding two crew members in the legs.  After successfully taking control of the aircraft the Chinese hijackers demanded to be flown to Taiwan where they hoped to defect.

Possibly fearing retribution from the Chinese government if he complied with the hijackers demands, the pilot did not fly the plane towards Taiwan, the pilot instead flew the plane towards Pyongyang.  1983 was during the Cold War when tensions were high and the pilot deciding to fly the airliner into North Korean airspace was a risky move.  He had no way of knowing how the North Koreans would react to an unannounced aircraft suddenly flying over their country.

The North Koreans initially reacted by monitoring the aircraft by radar.  However, since they were informed that it was a Chinese civilian airliner they took a wait and see approach with the aircraft.  The North Korea ground controllers may have even been working in concert with the pilot to dupe the hijackers since the North Korean Air Force did not dispatch any planes to intercept the airliner.  As the airliner approached Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport one of the hijackers noticed a big picture of North Korea’s leader, Kim Il-sung which tipped them off that they were being fooled by the pilot.  The hijackers forced the plane to divert the landing and instead head to South Korea.

After the aborted landing this is when the people on the airliner got very lucky.  It is likely that the North Korean government would want to stop this airliner from crossing the DMZ and entering South Korea.  However, the North Korean air defense authorities could not get a hold of the Kim Il-sung to authorize the shoot down of the aircraft.

Then, one of the hijackers detected something amiss when he saw a North Korean sign _ a big portrait of Kim Il-sung, the founder of the North and its then leader _ as the plane was approaching Pyongyang airport. The hijackers threatened the pilot at gunpoint, forcing him to abort the landing and head to the South. It landed at U.S. Camp Page in Chunchun, in the South’s Gangwon Province. Now, it took about 20 minutes for the the British-made HS121Trident aircraft to fly from Pyongyang to Chunchon with the North Korean air defense all but paralyzed.

The North Korean air defense commander was reprimanded for his failure to respond according to the manual for such an emergency. But he was spared from a firing squad because he tried without success to locate Kim Il-sung to gain his clearance to go after the aircraft as the regulations stipulated. Kim was out of touch and nobody except for him could make a decision about such a situation.  [Korea Times]

Due to the command paralyzation in North Korea, the Chinese airliner was able to safely cross the DMZ where it landed at the US military base of Camp Page outside the city of Chuncheon:

Hijackers Give Themselves Up at Camp Page

After the plane crossed over the DMZ it was intercepted by ROK Air Force fighter jets.  The pilot moved his wing left to right which is a signal of defection.  The ROK fighters escorted the plane towards the military airfield at Camp Page.  Once the plane landed at Camp Page negotiations with ROK authorities began with the hijackers to release the crew and passengers.  The hijackers eventually agreed to release the hostages where the two wounded crewmen were immediately taken to a hospital in Seoul for medical attention.  The remaining crew and passengers were put up at a luxury hotel in eastern Seoul.  Shortly after releasing the hostages the hijackers were taken into custody by ROK authorities without incident after requesting political asylum in Taiwan.  The Taiwanese government responded by saying they welcome “anyone aboard who desires to come to our home country.”

After taking the ROK authorities took the hijackers into custody, the Chinese government demanded the plane, passengers, and hijackers all be returned to China.  This is where things were tricky because at the time time South Korea and China did not have official diplomatic relations due to its decades long animosity of Chinese support to North Korea during the Korean War.  South Korea responded to the Chinese demands by saying they would respect the “spirit” of the 1970 Convention of the Hague which outlawed skyjackings without saying what they would do with the six hijackers.

Negotiations

Two days after the hijacking a 33 person Chinese delegation arrived in Seoul led by the CAAC Director Shen Tu. Through negotiations the Chinese and the ROK agreed to the return of the plane, its crew, and all Chinese passengers back to China.  The hijackers however would be subject to Korean law.  At the time it was a good compromise to resolve the dispute.  While negotiations were going on the passengers were warmly received by the Koreans.  During their time in South Korea the Chinese passengers were put on a sightseeing tour, received lavish meals, gifts, and entertainment.  The overall bill came up to over $28,000.  The three Japanese passengers on the plane however did not get to enjoy the lavish treatment, there were immediately returned to Japan the day after the hijacking.

Five days after the incident on May 10, 1983 all the passengers and crew were returned to South Korea and two weeks after the incident the Trident plane was returned as well:

A Chinese passenger plane hijacked to South Korea two weeks ago left for home Wednesday, ending an incident that led to the first official contact between China and South Korea.

The British-made Trident jetliner of China’s state airline, CAAC, left Seoul’s Kimpo International Airport at 10 a.m. with 13 people aboard.

Among the passengers was a radio operator who was one of two crew members wounded May 5 when five men and a woman armed with two pistols hijacked the plane to South Korea in the first hijacking of a jetliner out of China.

The plane’s 96 passengers and eight other crew members returned home May 10.  [UPI]

The crew and passengers when they arrived in China were greeted with the same type of welcome they received in South Korea.  Approximately two hundred weeping well wishers were present for their arrival and presented them with flowers.  They then met with politicians and then attended a reception to welcome them back to China.

Punishment

The return of the plane and passengers officially ended the dispute between the ROK and China, however the South Koreans still needed to prosecute the six hijackers they held in custody.  The hijackers received incredibly light sentences by receiving less than a year in jail before being resettled in Taiwan to a heroes welcome:

In 1983, six Chinese hijacked a plane to South Korea. They were imprisoned for less than a year and resettled in Taiwan, where they received heroes’ welcomes.  [Deseret News]

The punishment for the hijackers is probably what bothers me the most about this story.  They hijacked a plane, put the lives of the 96 passengers at risk, and shot two crew members, but their punishment was receiving less than a year in jail.  The political situation should have been put aside at the time and these hijackers should have been harshly dealt with to prevent future hijackings.

Conclusion

The aftermath of the CAAC Flight 296 hijacking did have some important ramifications.  First of all is that the hijacking showed how initiative within the North Korean military is held back because of the centralized control of the regime.  This incident also proved how North Korea did not have an adequate system in place to contact the top leadership in case of an emergency.  I would not be surprised if initiative in the North Korean military even today is still stifled because of the extreme controls the Kim regime needs to keep in place to control the country.  However, with the modern technology available today it is likely that the North Koreans have quicker access to its top leadership to make decisions if needed.

This hijacking also became a turning point for ROK and Chinese relations.  After the hijacking the two countries who had long been suspicious of each other, began a series of exchanges in sports, industry, and international conference attendance.  These positives events eventually led to South Korea severing relations with Taiwan in 1992 and officially establishing diplomatic ties with China on August 24, 1992.  Since then China has gone on to become South Korea’s #1 trade partner.  It is interesting to think that modern Chinese relations with South Korea began with a botched hijacking.

The Joong Ang Ilbo has an extensive profile on the life of Hwang In-cheol who is the son of a 32-year old MBC producer that was kidnapped by North Korea on a hijacked plane.  You can read about this story at my prior DMZ Flashpoints posting.  This hijacking is just one of the many terrorist incidents the Kim regime has never been held accountable for and to this day some how remains off of the US’s state sponsors of terrorism list:

When Hwang In-cheol was 2 years old, his father disappeared.

“Maybe he’ll come back on Christmas Day,” Hwang’s mother said.

Hwang counted down the days, imagining his father coming through the door laden down with presents.

It didn’t happen.

“Maybe next Christmas,” his mother said.

It wasn’t until Hwang was in the third grade that his father’s brother decided he should know the truth.

Hwang Won was a 32-year-old producer for Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) based in Gangwon. On Dec. 11, 1969, he boarded a Korean Air flight from Gangneung, Gangwon, for Gimpo International Airport in Seoul to attend an MBC internal meeting. A senior colleague who was supposed to attend was busy. He ordered Hwang to fill in for him.

Ten minutes after takeoff, a North Korean spy hijacked the YS-11 aircraft and the 50 other people on it, all South Koreans, to Wonsan, some 207 kilometers (128.6 miles) east of Pyongyang, the North’s capital.

The producer left behind his wife, a 3-month-old daughter and 2-year-old Hwang In-cheol.

It was the second – and last – instance of a South Korean aircraft being hijacked by the North. On Feb. 16, 1958, a Korean Air flight from Busan to Seoul was abducted midway with 34 people on board, including a few foreigners.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read much more at the link.

North Korea has a long history of terrorism with the 1968 Blue House Raid when 31 North Korean operatives tried to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee as the most audacious example.  Once the commandos were detected the ensuing gunfights killed dozens of civilians and soldiers.  A year later on December 12, 1969 the North Koreans would conduct a more conventional terrorist act by hijacking a civilian airliner flying from Gangneung to Gimpo carrying 46 passengers and 4 crew members. Here is an article about the hijacking in the December 13, 1969 edition of the Stars & Stripes:

The plane was hijacked by two North Korean agents posing as South Korean civilians that boarded the YS-11 aircraft in Kangneung and proceeded to hijack it shortly after takeoff.  The hijackers forced the pilots to fly the plane across the DMZ to Wonsan, North Korea.

Two days after the hijacking the North Koreans tried to blame it on the two pilots by claiming they wanted to defect.  Here is an article from the December 14, 1969 Stars & Stripes that discusses this claim:

The North Koreans even put the two pilots, Yu Byong-ha and Choe Sok-man on radio where they confirmed this claim.  However, these claims were dismissed by the ROK authorities because the two pilots were both decorated ROK Air Force veterans who the investigation determined had no reason to defect.  In fact the ROK authorities investigated the backgrounds of all 46 passengers on board the plane and cleared everyone except for two men, Han Chang-gi and Paek In-yong.  The ROK authorities could not find any background information on these two men leading them to believe they were the hijackers. The pilots’ so called confession on the radio was likely due to the threats made against them by the North Koreans.  This hijacking ended up causing a huge uproar within South Korean society because this provocation was directed solely at civilians unlike past provocations that were primarily directed at military and government targets:

What is really amazing about this hijacking is that there was supposed to be an American on the flight.  It must have been Mr. Duane R. Kinas’ lucky day because for some reason he missed the flight and avoided being held hostage in North Korea.  Who knows how different that man’s life would have been today if he boarded that plane?  For most of the the passengers and crew that did get on the plane that day they were eventually released by the North Koreans.  Two months later on February 14th, 1970 the North Koreans released 39 of the passengers through the peace village at Panmunjom. Here is an article from the February 16, 1970 Stars & Stripes about the release:

Considering how North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung was trying to create an insurgency within South Korea in concert with his series of military provocations, this hijacking seems like a miscalculation.  Maybe he realized this miscalculation and that is why he returned most of the hostages.  The North Koreans however continued to hold on to 6 passengers and the 4 crew members.  Considering the radio confession that the pilots made I can understand why the North Koreans would not want them to return, but the holding on to the other passengers and crew is still a mystery to this day. The North Koreans also never returned the YS-11 aircraft which makes me wonder what did they do with it?

Today this hijacking is largely forgotten except by the family members of those still held hostage in North Korea who have tried for decades to get their loved ones released with little help from the ROK government.  The only thing known about the hostages is that the two flight attendants are alive and well in North Korea:

On Dec. 12, 1969, a Korean Air Lines YS-11 aircraft flying from Gangneung, Gangwon, to Gimpo International Airport was hijacked by a North Korean spy at 12:36 p.m. and forced to fly to Pyongyang. The flight was carrying 46 South Korean passengers and four crew members, including Hwang Won, a 32-year-old producer for Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, who was on a business trip.

Hwang left behind his wife, a three-month-old daughter and a two-year-old son. They haven’t seen or heard from him since.

After 42 years, most Koreans have forgotten the hijacking and many young people have never heard about it at all. But Hwang’s son, Hwang In-cheol, 44, has never given up his search for the father he can’t even remember.

And he’s bitter about the scant assistance he’s received through the decades.

“For me, the biggest hardship in searching for my father is people’s indifference and the government’s negligence,” Hwang said. “The South Korean government has done nothing for me, except the formality of asking for help from the International Red Cross.”

Two days after the hijacking, North Korea broadcast a press conference through state-run radio station Pyongyang Broadcasting System. At the conference, the plane’s captain, Yu Byeong-ha, and its first officer, Choe Seok-man, said they had defected to the communist country, shocking South Korea.

But those claims were doubted, and after condemnation from the international community, North Korea said on Feb. 3, 1970, that it would repatriate all of the passengers and crew members and would return the aircraft to the South.

It reneged on parts of that promise. The aircraft was never returned. And on Feb. 14, 39 passengers were sent back to the South through Panmunjom, a village on the inter-Korean border. Eleven people – the captain, first officer, two female flight attendants and seven passengers – were held in North Korea.

“The 39 people who returned told the truth to the public at a press conference on Feb. 15 – it was a hijacking,” Hwang said. “A North Korean agent, Cho Chang-hee, disguised himself as a South Korean passenger and forced the captain to fly to the North after the plane took off.”

According to media reports at the time, the 39 released passengers said they were indoctrinated with North Korean ideology at a series of lectures. They reported that Hwang’s father got into a quarrel with a North Korean official, telling him, “All of the things you are saying are wrong.”

After that, Hwang’s father was dragged outside the classroom and separated from the other South Koreans for the next two weeks.

Another apparent transgression came, according to the passengers who returned, when the group was drinking with North Korean officials and Hwang’s father sang a song, “I want to go back to my hometown.”

“The people who were allowed to return to South Korea said they never saw him again after he sang that song,” Hwang said.

Since her husband disappeared, Hwang’s mother has suffered from poverty and mental illness. Afraid for her son’s safety, she rarely allowed him to enjoy outdoor activities or have normal social interactions.

For the past decade, Hwang has waged a one-man struggle to find his father. (His younger sister lives in Britain.)

He staged a solo rally in front of the National Assembly, sent a letter to North Korea through the Ministry of Unification and issued numerous statements.

The families of the missing passengers and crew formed a lobbying committee in the early days. “The North refused any demand from the committee, saying it was none of their business,” Hwang said.

“The committee was disbanded in 1979 when the group’s president died. Since then, I am the only one who fighting for the truth. And with no solutions, this tragedy has started to disappear from people’s memories.”

One breakthrough came on June 26, 2001, when a reunion for families separated by the Korean War was held in Pyongyang.

Seong Gyeong-hui, a flight attendant on the hijacked plane, met her mother and said she was married to a North Korean man and had a son and a daughter.

She said that the other flight attendant, Jeong Gyeong-suk, was fine, living in her neighborhood.

Except for those two, there has been no word of the others held in North Korea.

“In 2006, North Korea sent me a letter through the Red Cross that said they couldn’t confirm whether my father was alive or not,” Hwang said.

A special law enacted in 2007 says it is the South Korean government’s “duty” to make efforts to confirm the fate of abductees in North Korea and make efforts to bring them home.

Hwang said he once talked to a vice minister of unification at a meeting with families of abductees in North Korea in November 2010.

“The vice minister told me, ‘Currently, [improving] inter-Korean relations is the top priority for the ministry and it is difficult to talk about the matter at this moment.’”

“I know working-level officials in the ministry are doing their best with this issue,” Hwang said.

“However, I was really disappointed with the ministry at the time and thought that humanitarian issues should be separated from the issue of inter-Korean relations. I constantly asked the government for help, but they didn’t listen to me.”

Now Hwang is pinning his hopes on help from the international community. In June 2010, he registered his father as an abductee with the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

He was the first family member to do so and two other families followed his lead in the next few months.

Last month, the council officially requested that the North confirm whether the 11 abductees are still alive.

According to the UN’s rule, North Korea should reply to the demand within six months. If it refuses, North Korea will be listed by the UN as a country where forced disappearance happens.

“Hijacking is definitely an international crime, which has no statute of limitations,” Hwang said. “Unlike other abductions, North Korea can’t deny this case, because there is so much clear evidence.”

Hwang said that the first thing he wants to know about his father is whether he’s alive.

“If my father died, I want the North to send his remains and tell me everything that happened to him for the past 42 years, according to the international standard,” he said. “If he’s alive, I want to see him regularly, not like reunions in the past, which were one-shot affairs.

“If I could meet him,” Hwang said, “I want to wash his body from head to foot. That’s my dream.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

This is clearly an act of terrorism and yet according to the US State Department North Korea is not a state sponsor of terrorism . They were removed from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list in 2008 for denuclearization promises which they have never kept.  The State Department has refused to add them back to the list ever since despite them never answering for terrorist incidents against South Korea to include this hijacking where ROK citizens are still held hostage in North Korea.  The 1969 YS-11 hijacking is just one of many examples of ROK citizens being held hostage by the North Koreans which past deals with the Kim regime have never forced them to come clean on.  I have always believed that any future deals struck with North Korea should include them coming clean on the fate of these ROK citizens; unfortunately it seems politicians would rather have these hostages remain in the dustbins of history and forgotten.  They are not forgotten here on the ROK Drop.

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