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When the armistice of the Korean War was signed on July 27, 1953, the South Korean soldiers who were trapped in the north thought they would soon return home. They would never imagine that most of them would become indefinite prisoners of what was to be the most airtight regime in the world.

At the end of the war, around 50,000 South Korean prisoners were stranded in North Korea. Pyongyang only repatriated 8,726 after the armistice . These soldiers were assigned to the lowest social caste. They never removed the label of "enemies". A stigma inherited by their children , who were unable to receive higher education or the freedom to choose a job.

On July 7, a South Korean court ruled that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un must pay $ 35,000 in damages and prejudice to two former prisoners of war who have been detained in North Korea for decades. There is no precedent for a decision that is more symbolic than effective, but that could help drive more similar complaints against the regime.

Both former prisoners, Han (85 years old) and Noh (91 years old) decided to file their lawsuit against Kim Jong-un in 2016. The two were held in the North and subjected to forced labor after the end of the war in 1953. Han was working as a miner until he was able to escape in 2001 and Noh managed to flee a year earlier.

On this 67th anniversary of the end of the conflict, the North Korean dictator has visited a national cemetery on the outskirts of Pyongyang where several of those killed in the war are buried. During an act that the North Koreans consider the "victory of the Korean people in the great War of Liberation of the Fatherland", Kim Jong-un gave commemorative pistols to military commanders . In his speech to a group of veterans of the race, Kim defended that his country will not experience more wars thanks to its "nuclear deterrent potential", which he has described as "self-defense, reliable and effective". He further added that nuclear weapons would allow North Korea to defend itself "against any military pressure and high threat from the imperialists and hostiles."

The contest continues

Most historians agree that the conflict started when Kim Il Sung, the current leader's grandfather, invaded the South in an attempt to reunify the Korean peninsula by force . However, North Korea teaches its citizens that the war started when the United States and South Korea marched north. The armistice was signed, but technically the two neighboring countries are still at war.

In April 2018, a week before a summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, both nations enabled the so-called red phone among their leaders . "A historical connection," read the headlines. Since then, several hotlines have been established, which were broken in June by Pyongyang. Relations between the two neighbors are now completely stagnant again, although they have already severed many of their contacts after the failed Hanoi summit in 2019 between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump .

This week, a new confrontation-narrative-has broken out between the two Koreas. In this case, by the coronavirus. On Sunday, North Korea declared a state of emergency and a confinement in the border city of Kaesong after a person who allegedly had symptoms of Covid-19 returned from South Korea. The state news agency KCNA said the man, a 24-year-old defector, "could possibly be infected with coronavirus." If so, it would be the first case officially recognized by the North Korean authorities.

The man had returned to his country on July 19. According to the South Korean army, he would have swam across the North through the mouth of the Han and Imjin rivers, on the eastern flank of the militarized border between the two countries. It is not yet clear why the deserter had returned to the North. But South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that the police had sought the man for questioning after a fellow defector accused him of raping her last month .

Yesterday, from Seoul they affirmed that they do not believe that the deserter was infected. "This person is neither registered as a Covid-19 patient nor classified as a person who has had contact with patients with the virus," said Yoon Tae-ho, the country's top sanitation officer. Yoon also noted that the Center for Infectious Disease Control and Prevention subjected two people who had direct contact with the defector to PCR tests, both of whom had tested negative .

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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