Four decades Pyo Wook Jeon sat tight in North Korea. Kim’s army had kidnapped the South Korean fishermen. Now the man managed to escape. The 68-year-old wants to spend the last years of his life with his family.

On 28 December 1972 are lost track of Wook Jeon pyo. On that day, North Korean soldiers boarded the fishing boat in the Yellow Sea, where did the then 27-year-old South Korean service. Overall, the troops of the communist regime abducted 25 South Korean fishing that day.

Well Jeon has resurfaced. A month ago, the now 68 years old man succeeded after almost 41 years to escape from the realm of the Kim dynasty, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. First, Jeon had settled on unfamiliar ground in an unnamed unnamed third country. From there, he asked South Korean President Park Geun Hye in a letter for help.

Pyongyang still holds thousands of South Koreans

“I have used the opportunity to flee from the north, because I always had the stronger desire to spend the rest of my life with my brothers and relatives at home,” Jeon wrote, according to Yonhap. In early September, he finally landed in South Korea.

Currently, the man will still debriefed by the authorities, said a government official with Seoul. Then he could see his family again. Whether Jeon was interned during his time in North Korea in a prison camp, is still unclear. Also the fate of the kidnapped fishermen with him Nothing is known.

According to the South Korean Ministry of Reunification in Pyongyang, the regime is still holding tight around 3,000 soldiers and civilians. Some of them are since the Korean War in the early fifties in North Korea. Seoul calls for their immediate release. The authorities in the north to deny that South Koreans are being held against their will.

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