REVEALED: North Korea has kept Brit and US prisoners of war caged for 60 YEARS

PSYCHO leader Kim Jong-un is believed to be holding Brit squaddies captive as human war trophies after his grandad captured them during the Korean conflict.

By Patrick Knox / Published 23rd August 2016

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CHILLING: North Korea is alleged to have held POWs for years

Hundreds of British and American prisoners of war (POWs) are thought to have perished in the regime’s infamous concentration camps – likened to ones in the Nazi era – after being captured 60 years ago.

But veterans campaigners and historians say some of them could still be alive at the mercy of maniacal Jong-un.

These lost boys could today be old men trapped in a cruel and claustrophobic hell, desperate to get home to their wives, girlfriends and children after decades away.

Top secret documents seen by Daily Star Online lay bare evidence that hundreds of soldiers – including Brits – were left behind and abandoned by governments who wrote them off as missing in action.

DAMNING: This document proves the US government knew about POWs being secretly detained

One of these reports was written by Chief of Staff of the American Airforce, Nathan F Twinning, one year after the Korean War had ended.

By this stage North Korea was supposed to have handed all its POWs back.

Mr Twinning said: "An unknown but substantial number of US military personnel captured in the course of the Korean War are still being held prisoner.

"It is therefore requested that requirements be placed on appropriate operating organizations for clandestine and covert actions to locate, identify and recover US prisoners of war still in communist custody."

But there is no evidence to suggest this ever happened.

And it is not just Americans who were believed to have kept behind. Brits have been sighted too.

A top secret CIA "live sightings report" (see below) from 1997 confirms this:

            

NIGHTMARE: This CIA document refers to sightings of Brits and Americans

The most compelling reports of British and American POWs in North Korea was reported to the Department of Defense by a Romanian on Feb 17 1988 who had been visiting North Korea.

He spotting a middle-aged white men toiling on a farm between the capital Pyongyang and the city of Nampo.

 

Harrowing testimonies of North Korean defectors about the regime's prison camps describe being kept in holes, enduring savage torture, beatings and starvation as well as being used as slave labourers.

Investigative historian Mark Sauter, who has written the book American Trophies about how the POWs were abandoned to their fate, 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."

But he said the US government is keeping important documents secret and is making no real effort to find the truth and rescue captives.

HORROR: A rare photograph of a North Korean concentration camp smuggled out of the country

Mr Sauter’s friend Sydney Schanberg, the legendary reporter whose coverage of the fall of Cambodia was made into the film The Killing Fields, said shortly before his death in July this year, that Washington had covered the POW scandal up.

He said: "Though the evidence of these crimes is monumental, our government has never told this to the American public.

"Washington has simply covered it up and the timid mainstream press has done the same."

CAPTURED: Captured Americans are paraded in front of the cameras

The Korean War involved a brutal and blood-thirsty fight between 1950 and 1953 that killed about 3.5million people.

The Chinese-backed communist North, led by Kim’s granddad Kim Il-sung, battled the capitalist South which was supported by troops and pilots from western nations such as the US and the UK.

The war ended in a truce that still holds today but North Korea came off worst and is alleged to have kept British and American POWs as human war trophies.

Officially 1,060 British soldiers were taken captive but at least 82 did not make it back – and there are suggestions the true number may be higher.

Declassified documents show the United States knew North Korea had failed to set free more than 900 American prisoners.

 

CAPTURED: Brit troops from the Gloucestershire Regiment, members of which were taken prisoner

Historians claim western governments walked away from the missing POWs because they did not want to start demanding their return amid fears this could spark a second Korean War.

It was feared if that happened a nuclear war would could break out because the Soviet Union – which was North Korea's ally – had begun arming itself to the teeth with nukes.

Campaigners and top North Korean researchers – who are fighting on behalf of families of captives – say they have proof American and British servicemen were imprisoned and have been sighted alive still.