Any POWs held in 1953 would now be at least 80 years old.
The Daily Star article cited "top secret documents" that provided evidence of hundreds of soldiers, including British, were "abandoned by governments who wrote them off as missing in action."
The primary document cited in the Daily Star article was a U.S. Air Force memorandum prepared for the director of the CIA on March 16, 1954, by Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining, who later became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The memo stated, in part:
1. An unknown but apparently substantial number of U.S. military personnel captured in the course of the Korean War are still being held prisoners by the Communist Forces. These individuals will not necessarily be retained by North Korea or Manchuria, but be held elsewhere within the Soviet orbit....
4. It is therefore requested that requirements be placed on appropriate operating organizations for clandestine and covert action to locate, identify, and recover those U.S. prisoners who are still in Communist custody.
The Daily Star writer noted that there is no evidence to suggest that General Twining’s mandate to locate, identify, and recover the POWs ever happened. The report then went on to cite and display a top secret CIA "live sightings report" from 1997 that stated: "There have been numerous report of both American and British POWs in North Korea. One of the most compelling reports received over the years was a sighting reported to DoD by a Romanian in 17 Feb 1988."
The article went on to refer the book American Trophies by investigative historian Mark Souter, which was about the abandonment of American POWs. Sauter told Daily Star Online: "The evidence shows allied POWs from Korea, reportedly including some Brits, were kept by the communists after the Korean War. Reports are continuing to escape from North Korea of Caucasian POWs who are still alive."
"I believe that presidents up through and including George Bush have known Americans were left alive and in violation of the law, these high officials and certain of their appointed subordinates have continued and perpetrated a cover up of this reality."