Working Alongside The North Korean Military
(International Politics - Risk & Threat)
To tell people that you had a close working relationship with the North Korean military for a 6 month period would in itself raise more than a few eyebrows. Working for 3 years in North Korea was on the one hand a time of frustration and on the other a time of discovery in this fascinating yet enigmatic country. Butting heads on a daily basis with the stifling North Korean bureaucracy was always a battle, but occasionally there was a glimmer of achievement and sometimes from the most unlikeliest of sources.
In early 2004, I was contacted at the embassy in Pyongyang by the brother of an RAF pilot who had been shot down in 1952 over North Korea during the Korean war. He said he had full details of the shoot down supplied by eyewitness USAF pilots and map coordinates of the site of the crash (which he sent to me) and wished to visit the area to discover the fate of his brother. The background was that the pilot, Flt Lt Desmond Hinton, who received the Distinguished Flying Cross in World War II for shooting down two Japanese fighters had bailed out of his burning F84e Thunderjet whilst carrying out a strafing mission north east of Pyongyang on 2 January 1952. At the time, Flt Lt Hinton was one of a number of RAF pilots who were attached to and flying with the USAF. Despite enquiries after the war and with no further information as to his fate forthcoming, Flt Lt Hinton was subsequently officially listed as missing in action.
This seemed a daunting request, but nevertheless I submitted it to the North Koreans and having gone through the usual long and tortuous channels I was surprised to receive an invitation to a meeting with senior North Korean military officers to discuss the request. Soon after therefore, it was with some degree of trepidation that I and my interpreter met these senior officers at a large military base on the outskirts of Pyongyang. I outlined the request to them and also provided them with all the relevant information that had been sent to me. They listened politely. They were very courteous and the atmosphere was more relaxed than I had anticipated. They said they would investigate this case and get back in touch. I thought that this was the end of the meeting, but no. They invited me to have lunch with them, which I accepted but wished that I had not imbibed so much Soju toasting goodness knows what, a fiery spirit I definitely was not used to.
I thought after that first meeting that would be the end of it. I would get the usual reply back saying this request was not possible to facilitate. Against all expectations, they did get back to me shortly afterwards with some startling news. They had identified the site which was in a village called Kuso-ri/Gueso-ri which was situated near to what is currently the main airport for Pyongyang. They had spoken with villagers including two who had witnessed the shoot down. Flt Lt Hinton had indeed bailed out but his parachute failed and he was killed on impact, the villagers had then interred him in an unmarked grave in a field adjacent to the village. This spot had been identified and human remains and fragments of uniform were also uncovered.
This news then led over the next six months to a long series of meetings, usually weekly either at Army HQ in Pyongyang or at a military base on the outskirts of the city chaired on the military side by Senior Colonel Kwak Chol-hui. The Colonel who would later go on to be promoted to Major General was responsible throughout the negotiations for arranging visits to the site, meetings with the two surviving eyewitnesses and agreeing that Flt Lt Hinton's brother would be fast tracked for a visa and allowed to visit the DPRK site to pay his final respects to his brother.
True to their word, Flt Lt Hinton's brother was granted his visa and permitted to visit the village. At a meeting we had with the military, he was offered the choice of having his brother's remains repatriated to the south via Panmunjon or re-buried on the outskirts of the village. He chose the latter. Therefore, the military re-buried his remains in a properly marked grave and on the final day of his visit, he was part of a small, brief ceremony attended by members of the British Embassy, North Korean military and villagers. Despite my requests, the North Koreans had refused to allow me to obtain a properly inscribed headstone from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, so a simple marker was used instead. Overall, it was a small victory but did give some form of closure to the family of Flt Lt Hinton.
Our host, Senior Colonel Kwak Chol-hui, was one of the very few Korean People’s Army officers who had dealings with foreigners. He met two Senate Foreign Relations Committee members in 2003, and told them “that the DPRK would like to expand the joint recovery operation, employing as many as 2,700 investigators to scour the country to conduct interviews with those elderly North Korean who might have knowledge of the location of U.S. remains. He indicated that the DPRK’s commitment to the recovery operations was independent of the nuclear issue, and, in his opinion, should remain so.
Note: In 2011, the remains of Flt Lt Hinton were finally repatriated and in a ceremony at Panmunjon, the remains were passed over to military authorities in the south.
