International activists and experts on abduction gathered at the British Embassy in Seoul on Wednesday to discuss how their experiences with the topic may apply to North Korea.

After the Korean War, it is believed that more than 3,000 South Koreans were kidnapped and taken to North Korea, and 516 remain there. Also, from 1959 to 1984, 90,000 ethnic Koreans in Japan were repatriated to North Korea without being informed of the environment they were heading for.

“The Republic of Korea provided families of the abductees with no recourse, instead characterizing them as potential spies and ostracizing them from society,”