A former intelligence official argues that governments must distinguish evidence from assumptions and keep searching until a missing person's fate is confirmed.
Gen. James Van Fleet, right, and his son, James Van Fleet Jr., who were jointly named Korean War Heroes of the Month in 2014.YONHAP
Jang Seok-kwang
The author is the general secretary of the Academy of National Intelligence.
Controversy over the false closure of a missing-person case on Jeju has revived an old memory of a disappearance I once witnessed more than 30 years ago.
A North Korean defector vanished without a trace. He had been with the police officer assigned to him until late the previous evening, but was gone when the officer returned the next morning. When he failed to appear by nightfall, the officer contacted me, as I had questioned him. There was no sign of a crime. His new resident registration card, clothes and bankbook containing his resettlement money were untouched. Police and the Agency for National Security Planning searched for months but found nothing.
Years later, one winter, a North Korean approached a South Korean diplomatic mission in Southeast Asia seeking to defect. His fingerprints were checked against records as a precaution. They belonged to the missing defector.
I thought his return would reveal where he had been and what had happened. But the matter ended there. I heard rumors that he had ties to another agency and had returned to South Korea. Intelligence compartmentalization kept me from learning more. More than 30 years later, I still do not know what happened. His fingerprints were identified only because officials never stopped checking.
That experience made me think about what “missing” really means. In intelligence, it does not simply mean someone’s whereabouts are unknown. It means authorities do not know whether the person was abducted, killed, defected, recruited by a hostile intelligence service or voluntarily abandoned his identity.
How, then, do intelligence agencies handle such cases? One answer appears in a 1974 CIA internal history, “Missing in Action — People and Policies, 1948–1973” (1974). The document shows that the CIA did not immediately presume missing personnel dead. Until their fate and whereabouts were established, they remained unconfirmed cases while searches and intelligence gathering continued.
One example was CIA officer Lewis Ojibway, who disappeared in Laos in 1965. On Aug. 20, the helicopter carrying him crashed into the Mekong River. Some bodies were recovered and a survivor was rescued, but Ojibway was never found. The CIA concluded he had most likely been swept away and killed. Yet without conclusive evidence, the agency kept him listed as missing for a year.
After a year produced no new evidence, the CIA designated Aug. 20, 1966, as his presumed date of death and issued a death certificate that fall. But his death had not been directly confirmed. Inferring death from circumstances and proving it through evidence such as remains are different things.
Intelligence assessments have not always matched reality. On Nov. 29, 1952, CIA officers John Downey and Richard Fecteau were aboard a plane heading to Manchuria to pick up a Chinese operative when it was shot down near the North Korea-China border. The pilots died, while Downey and Fecteau disappeared. Radio and radar contact was lost, and the CIA reasonably presumed all four men dead.
But Downey and Fecteau had survived and were captured by China. Their survival became known through a Chinese trial in 1954. After years in detention, Fecteau returned to the United States in December 1971 and Downey in March 1973.
John Downey, left, and Richard Fecteau, as shown on the CIA website. Source: CIA, “Extraordinary Fidelity: Two CIA Officers Imprisoned in China,” May 12, 2025.SCREEN CAPTURE FROM THE CIA WEBSITE
The lesson is clear. Intelligence agencies must make judgments under uncertainty. But “this is our assessment based on current information” must remain distinct from “this has been confirmed as fact.”
The case of James Van Fleet Jr. shows why. On April 4, 1952, during the 1950-53 Korean War, he disappeared while flying a B-26 bomber on a night mission. Searches for the aircraft and crew found nothing. There was no credible evidence that he had been captured, but neither was there conclusive evidence proving his death.
His fate and whereabouts therefore remain unresolved. The U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency still classifies him as “unaccounted-for,” with his case in the analytical category “Deferred.” Something unconfirmed does not become confirmed merely through age. That is why Van Fleet remains unaccounted for more than 74 years later.
Intelligence agencies do not retain missing cases simply out of compassion. Treating the unverified as verified creates institutional risks and violates an organization’s responsibility to those who disappear.
Trust begins with the belief that if officers vanish on a mission, their organization will not simply erase them. The same principle applies between a government and its citizens. The quality of an intelligence service is not demonstrated by knowing everything. It is demonstrated by distinguishing what it knows from what it does not, and what is assessment from what is confirmed fact.
That is the insight the CIA’s “Missing in Action” offers us today. And it leaves South Korea with a question: Even when the missing person is not an intelligence officer, is it not a basic duty of the state to keep searching until the truth is established?
In the Jeju case, how did police record the missing person, what did they actually verify and how responsibly did they handle what remained unconfirmed?
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
