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then Pyongyang to mocked 70 years since deciding of the Korean War Armistice although it has largely held it's never been replaced by a peace treaty which means the two sides are still technically at War it means tens of thousands of South Korean prisoners of War have been held captive in the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peace has eluded it a set of documents is signed by General Harris the delicate Armistice signed in 1953 has never been replaced by a peace treaty and tens of thousands of captured South Korean soldiers have never been returned is one of the very few who managed to plot his own Escape he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

Channel: BBC News

Views: 153,925

Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, world news, breaking news, us news, world

Id: PMkeUEHegrg

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023