During the Korean War, tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers became prisoners of war (POW) to North Korea, and many of them remain there.

The South Korean Ministry of Defense, in a report to the National Assembly in 2007, said that nearly 42,000 South Korean soldiers went missing in the Korean War.

The exact number of South Korean POWs still in the North is not known for certain. While the South Korean government believes that between 500 and 600 POWs are still alive in the North, there are other sources, including the Korean Institute for National Unification’s 2008 White