U.S. Defectors Reported Still In North Korea Pentagon Says Korean War Prisoners Also May Be Alive

Pentagon investigators believe that four former American soldiers who defected from their units in South Korea in the 1960s are now living in communist North Korea, a U.S. defense official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said the Pentagon was pursuing unconfirmed intelligence leads that as many as 11 Americans taken prisoner in the 1950-53 Korean War were still alive in the North.

The intelligence leads emerged in the late 1980s, but until now the Pentagon has not commented publicly on them.

The four Americans the Pentagon believes are living in North Korea have no connection with the Korean War. They were among six U.S. soldiers who defected in the 1960s from the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, based in South Korea, the official said. Pentagon investigators believe two of the six died.

The official said the Pentagon knows the names of the four but is not releasing them. Their identities were established through analysis of photographs apparently connected to their participation in a North Korean movie “Nameless Heroes,” he said.

The black-and-white movie, apparently filmed over several years in the early 1980s, portrays North Korea’s counterintelligence efforts during the Korean War. The title is variously translated as “Nameless Heroes” or “Unknown Hero.”

Other details about the four Americans, such as their exact whereabouts and the extent of their freedom of movement, could not be learned.

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo published a photograph this week that it said was of a former American POW acting in a North Korean movie made in the 1980s. It appeared to be the same movie the Pentagon has analyzed, but the Pentagon believes the Americans in it were defectors, not POWs.

U.S. officials have not ruled out that some POWs may still be captives in North Korea.

A Feb. 2, 1989, U.S. military intelligence report said a defector had reported that 11 U.S. POWs were working as English teachers and translators at North Korea’s military’s foreign language school in the capital, Pyongyang. The report said the 11 were not allowed to travel freely. Their names were not known.

“We’re still very interested in those reports,” the U.S. official said Monday.