Is Kim Jong Un’s North Korea Abducting South Koreans? UN Working Group Says Numbers ‘Alarmingly High’ As Pyongyang Refuses To Cooperate

Days after the United States and South Korea agreed to hold joint military exercises next month in a bid to deter North Korea’s nuclear program, a United Nations’ working group said Friday the list of South Koreans that may have been abducted by Pyongyang has been increasing in size, local media reported.

The U.N.'s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances said last year it was looking into 53 cases of South Koreans who may have been taken by the North during and after the 1950-1953 Korean War. On requesting Pyongyang for information on 41 of the cases, the reclusive country did not provide the required answers to queries regarding the fates of the missing people, the expert group’s report submitted to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council last July showed.

The panel, at a press conference in Seoul, said Kim Jong Un’s North Korea has maintained the same unresponsiveness to more requests for information. The five-member panel’s chairwoman Houria Es-Slami said the number of missing South Koreans had increased at an “alarmingly high” rate since last year’s report, Yonhap News Agency reported.

While the international panel did not reveal numbers, the South Korean government has reportedly maintained that almost 3,000 soldiers and civilians from the South were confirmed to have been kidnapped by North Korea during and after the war.

One of the members of the panel, Ariel Dulitzky, said they had asked North Korea to allow the group an on-site visit last year, but received no response. He added that because of Kim’s regime’s lack of cooperation, “sadly up to today, we could not verify any single case.”

The international panel is set to hold a five-day consultation in Seoul following the press conference to review petitions about those who are missing.

North Korea, however, has historically rejected all such accusations.