hankyoreh

A South Korean will return to his waiting and anxious family late Tuesday, more than 31 years after he was abducted by North Korea while working aboard a fishing boat.

Choi Uk-il, 67, boarded a Korean Air flight bound for South Korea's Incheon International Airport from Shenyang, China. The flight was estimated to arrive around 4:30 p.m., Cho Jung-pyo, a vice foreign minister, told reporters.

"The government has been working closely with the Chinese government for Mr. Choi Uk-il's return at the earliest date possible, while stressing that (Choi) is a South Korean citizen, thus different from North Korean defectors" hiding in China, Cho said.

A number of South Korean citizens kidnapped by the North decades ago have come back to South Korea after crossing the communist state's border with China, but it has usually taken weeks or months before the Chinese government recognized their South Korean citizenship and allowed them to fly home.

North Koreans in high-profile defection cases usually have to wait months before flying to South Korea, while the majority of them are first deported to a third country.

Others who are caught by Chinese authorities before outside help reaches them, are repatriated back to their communist homeland, where they face severe punishments. China, a closely ally and the largest benefactor of North Korea, has a pact with the North to repatriate any North Koreans.

Choi had been hiding in China since defecting the communist North late last year. His unprecedentedly fast departure from China came after China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing promised full support for his release.

Unfortunately, and yet luckily for Choi, his first calls for help to South Korean officials and a consulate in China were turned down in what his 66-year-old wife Yang Jeong-ja described as a "rude manner." Reports of the South Korean officials' rude treatment prompted an uproar by the South Korean public, who demanded the immediate release of Choi from China and his return to the country.

Foreign Minister Song Min-soon personally picked up the issue in a bilateral meeting with his Chinese counterpart last week in the Philippines, where the two were attending an annual summit of their state leaders with Japan and 10 Southeast Asian nations.

Li had promised Song to shorten "all the time required for legal processes" for Choi's departure from China, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Choi was taken to the North in August, 1975 when his fishing boat with 32 other crew members was seized by a North Korean Navy vessel off the east coast.

Another crew member on the boat, Goh Myeong-seop, 63, returned to the country after escaping from North Korea in 2005, but the rest remain in the North.

Seoul believes over 480 South Koreans have been abducted by the North since the end of 1950-53 Korean War and still remain in the communist nation.

Pyongyang denies holding any South Koreans, claiming the ones there came voluntarily.

Seoul, Jan. 16 (Yonhap News)