SEOUL, June 28 (UPI) -- Seoul called on Pyongyang Friday to free South Korean prisoners of war held in North Korea since the Korean War hostilities ended 60 years ago.
South Korea's commission on Korean War abductees has said that a total of 2,265 South Korean soldiers were taken prisoner by the North during and after the war, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Furthermore, almost 100,000 South Koreans have been kidnapped by the North since the war, the South's government has said.
"North Korea should be cooperative with our efforts to overcome the tragic history," Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said Friday at an event held in Seoul by the families of South Korean abductees. "Resolving the issue of Korean War abductees and victims is an important task for the government as well as for the inter-Korean policy."
Pyongyang responded by criticizing Seoul's effort to track war prisoners in the North, saying some of the alleged abductees were actually voluntary defectors.
Seoul has turned "patriotic figures who went to the North in search of justice and truth" into war abductees, the North's government said.
