The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and rebellions in South Korea. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United Nations, principally the United States. The fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953.
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war and therefore is claimed not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross points out that the terms "unlawful combatant", "illegal combatant" or "unprivileged combatant/belligerent" are not defined in any international agreements. While the concept of an unlawful combatant is included in the Third Geneva Convention, the phrase itself does not appear in the document. Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention does describe categories under which a person may be entitled to prisoner of war status. There are other international treaties that deny lawful combatant status for mercenaries and children.
The Prisoner of War Medal is a military award of the United States Armed Forces which was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on 8 November 1985. The United States Code citation for the POW Medal statute is 10 U.S.C. § 1128.
Missing in action (MIA) is a casualty classification assigned to combatants, military chaplains, combat medics, and prisoners of war who are reported missing during wartime or ceasefire. They may have been killed, wounded, captured, executed, or deserted. If deceased, neither their remains nor grave has been positively identified. Becoming MIA has been an occupational risk for as long as there has been warfare.
Floyd James "Jim" Thompson was a United States Army colonel. He was one of the longest-held American prisoner of war in U.S. history that was returned or captured by troops, spending nearly nine years in captivity in the forests and mountains of South Vietnam and Laos, and in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
The Lieber Code of April 24, 1863, issued as General Orders No. 100, Adjutant General's Office, 1863, was an instruction signed by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to the Union forces of the United States during the American Civil War that dictated how soldiers should conduct themselves in wartime. Its name reflects its author, the German–American legal scholar and political philosopher Franz Lieber.
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
The People's Volunteer Army (PVA) was the armed expeditionary forces deployed by the People's Republic of China during the Korean War. Although all units in the PVA were actually transferred from the People's Liberation Army under the orders of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the PVA was separately constituted in order to prevent an official war with the United States. The PVA entered Korea on 19 October 1950, and completely withdrew by October 1958. The nominal commander and political commissar of the PVA was Peng Dehuai before the ceasefire agreement in 1953, although both Chen Geng and Deng Hua served as the acting commander and commissar after April 1952 due to Peng's illness. The initial units in the PVA included 38th, 39th, 40th, 42nd, 50th, 66th Corps; totalling 250,000 men. About 3 million Chinese civilian and military personnel had served in Korea throughout the war.
The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), as part of the United States Department of Defense, was an organization that reported to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy through the Assistant Secretary of Defense. DPMO provided centralized management of prisoner of war/missing personnel (POW/MP) affairs within the Department of Defense.
Awards and decorations of the United States Merchant Marine are civilian decorations of the United States which are issued to the members of the United States Merchant Marine for a variety of duties both in peace and war. Originally authorized to be issued by the War Shipping Administration of the World War II era, these awards were later issued by the Maritime Commission and are currently issued by the Department of Transportation's Martitime Administration.
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) is a training program, best known by its military acronym, that prepares U.S. military personnel, U.S. Department of Defense civilians, and private military contractors to survive and "return with honor" in survival scenarios. The curriculum includes survival skills, evading capture, application of the military code of conduct, and techniques for escape from captivity. Formally established by the U.S. Air Force at the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War, it was extended to the Navy and United States Marine Corps and consolidated within the Air Force during the Korean War with greater focus on "resistance training."
Captain Humbert Roque "Rocky" Versace was a United States Army officer of Puerto Rican-Italian descent who was posthumously awarded the United States' highest military decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his heroic actions while a prisoner of war (POW) during the Vietnam War.
Operation Homecoming was the return of 591 American prisoners of war (POWs) held by North Vietnam following the Paris Peace Accords that ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
Tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers were captured by North Korean and Chinese forces during the Korean War (1950–1953) but were not returned during the prisoner exchanges under the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement. Most are presumed dead, but the South Korean government estimated in 2007 that some 560 South Korean prisoners of war (POWs) still survived in North Korea. The issue of unaccounted South Korean POWs from the Korean War has been in dispute since the 1953 armistice. North Korea continues to deny that it holds these South Korean POWs. Interest in the issue has been renewed since 1994, when Cho Chang-ho, a former South Korean soldier presumed to have been killed in the war, escaped from North Korea. As of 2008, 79 former South Korean soldiers had escaped from North Korea.
It has been estimated that prior to the end of the Pacific War in August 1945, 10 million members of the Imperial Japanese military were captured alive or surrendered to Western Allied forces. Also, Soviet troops seized and imprisoned more than half a million Japanese troops and civilians in China and other places. The number of Japanese soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who surrendered was limited by the Japanese military indoctrinating its personnel to fight to the death, Allied combat personnel often being unwilling to take prisoners, and many Japanese soldiers believing that those who surrendered would be killed by their captors.
Members of the United States armed forces were held as prisoners of war (POWs) in significant numbers during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1973. Unlike U.S. service members captured in World War II and the Korean War, who were mostly enlisted troops, the overwhelming majority of Vietnam-era POWs were officers, most of them Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps airmen; a relatively small number of Army enlisted personnel were also captured, as well as one enlisted Navy seaman, Petty Officer Doug Hegdahl, who fell overboard from a naval vessel. Most U.S. prisoners were captured and held in North Vietnam by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN); a much smaller number were captured in the south and held by the Việt Cộng (VC). A handful of U.S. civilians were also held captive during the war.
A duty to escape is a requirement that military personnel attempt to escape from captivity if taken prisoner of war. It is referred to in Second World War prisoner of war films including 1963's The Great Escape but was not actually a duty imposed on British officers at the time. The duty was formally applied to U.S. military personnel as article III of the 1955 Code of the United States Fighting Force, which remains in effect.
Armenian prisoners of 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War are servicemen of the Defense Army of the Republic of Artsakh and the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, as well as civilians and other detainees, who surrendered or were forcibly captured by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces during and after the conflict in 2020 between Azerbaijan and the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh together with Armenia in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas.
