From Prisoners of War to Civilian: The Screening, Classification, and Release Process of Civilian Internees in UN Prisoner of War Camps during the Korean War

This paper aims to reconstruct the process of screening, classifying, and releasing Civilian Internees held in UN prisoner-of-war (POW) camps during the Korean War, highlighting how this process was closely intertwined with the UN Command’s POW repatriation policy. In these camps, not only communist POWs were held, but also civilians who were mistakenly detained as refugees, conscripted volunteers who had been forcibly drafted by the North Korean army in the South, and former South Korean soldiers. The South Korean government, focusing on the conscripted volunteers from the South, demanded the prompt release of approximately 40,000 individuals. However, the UN Command delayed their release in preparation for the ongoing armistice negotiations. After about a year from the first screening, in July 1951, the UN forces, as part of preparations for POW negotiations, reclassified around 39,500 South Korean POWs as Civilian Internees and excluded them from the POW exchange lists with the communist forces. However, when the communist side insisted on including these individuals in the exchange lists, causing delays in the negotiations, the UN Command conducted an additional screening to determine repatriation based on the internees’ voluntary decision. Ultimately, in 1952, approximately 30,000 Civilian Internees refused repatriation and were released to various regions in South Korea, while around 9,000 were repatriated to North Korea after the signing of the armistice agreement in 1953. The fluctuating handling of Civilian Internees between voluntary and forced repatriation demonstrates how the POW repatriation principles of both sides, while publicly emphasizing their ideological merits, were in practice shaped by rapidly shifting political demands and the situation within the camps.