(This is where it would be really helpful to have more readers, say, by an order of magnitude or two, to initiate an extended discussion. But anyway:)
This whole bit with the Bergdahl swap had me thinking about a book I read a while ago, about North Korea, and the fact that it’s now been proven that North Korea held onto a great many South Korean POWs after the war ended, in prison camps and later released, but unable to return home. South Korea for many years denied their existence because it would imperil their “sunshine policy” of making nice with the NORKs, but now there are organization which actively try to rescue aging POWs through their underground networks, with some success.
And this book — sorry, I can’t recall the title and would have to make a trip to the library to flip through the various books on the topic — also says that there are, or were, at least, American POWs in the same situation, either in North Korea or shipped off to Siberian gulags.
We also continue to fly the POW/MIA flag. Quite some time ago now, I mentioned to my dad that it struck me as odd to still fly it, long after POWs have been released, and he said that he believes that North Vietnam didn’t release all their prisoners, and may still have some — and he’s not usually one to buy into conspiracy theories.
(* Mind you, I’m too young to have experienced the “Vietnam Era” first-hand.)
The Wikipedia article on Vietnam POWs paints their searchers as loons and con artists. But it seems to me to be entirely possible for the U.S. to have, indeed, left men behind when we moved from wars where we were the unquestioned victor to ones in which we didn’t have control over enemy territory afterwards.
As usual, I’ll add: what do you think?
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