SEOUL, Kim Seong-tae, a former prisoner of war (POW) who won a compensation suit against North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un, has died at the age of 91, a human rights organization said Wednesday.

Dream makers for NK said Kim died Tuesday, just six months after he won the damages suit alongside two other former POWs, who escaped from the North in the early 2000s after being taken prisoner during the 1950-53 Korean War.

In May, the Seoul Central District Court ordered North Korea and its leader Kim to pay 50 million won (US$36,818) each to the three former POWs who filed their litigation in September 2020.

Kim became a POW while assisting an injured company commander. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for attempts to flee and worked at a coal mine after his release in 1966. Kim escaped to the South in 2001.

After winning the suit in May, Kim said he will “fight for the Republic of Korea” until the day he dies while expressing mixed emotions at being able to return to his home country but being unable to reunite with deceased family members.

Kim will be laid to rest at Seoul National Cemetery in central Seoul.

Since the Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953, 80 South Korean POWs in North Korea have returned to their home country. With Kim’s death, the number of surviving former POWs in South Korea stands at 10.

South Korea estimates that more than 500 POWs are still alive in the North as of late 2016. Still, North Korea denies holding any POWs.

Source: Yonhap News Agency