Son of North Korea hijack victim still campaigns for father’s return nearly 50 years on – but pleas fall on deaf ears
Hwang In-cheol was two when his father was kidnapped with 49 other South Koreans on board a Korean Air Lines flight. He now wages a tireless campaign to bring his father home, but time and government support are against him
Hwang Won was being held in hostile territory, 50 days after being abducted. He was not going to let his resolve be broken, though. It was Lunar New Year’s Day, 1970 and – yearning for his home and family – the 32-year-old South Korean television producer began to sing a popular folk song: “My hometown, the blue South Sea, comes into view as scenes from the past. How can I forget the calm blue sea? No never, never, even in my dreams. Seagulls there now still might be flying, how I wish to return home.”
Feeling emboldened, Hwang’s 49 fellow captives joined in the singing. As they reached the chorus, a North Korean military officer marched into the room, singled out Hwang as the ringleader and dragged him away, even as he continued to sing. It was the last the others saw of him.
Although Hwang is still believed to be alive, his family have not seen him for almost half a century.
On a winter’s morning in 1969, Hwang, a producer for South Korean television company Munhwa Broadcasting, was leaving home on a business trip. He had said goodbye to his wife and three-month-old daughter, but blocking the door was his son, In-cheol. This was routine; the two-year-old boy would stand his ground, extend his arms and only after his father had given him some loose change would he let him pass.
“How I wish that I had actually blocked the door and did not allow my father to leave the house on that fateful day,” says Hwang In-cheol, moist eyed, when we meet in the South Korean capital, Seoul. “I have missed my father, not having him around as I was growing up. My mother and my sister, we are all waiting for him to return home. All I want to do is bring my father home.”
