Hwang Won, Jr. joined Freedom Speakers International in March 2016 after he was a featured speaker at FSI’s International Volunteer Workshop. Later that year, he was named as the FSI Fellow in Human Dignity.

He was two years old when his father was kidnapped with 49 other South Koreans on board a Korean Air Lines flight. He now wages a tireless campaign to bring his father home.

Hwang’s father, Won Hwang, was kidnapped to North Korea on a business trip on December 11, 1969, when he was 32. This is because the plane he boarded was captured by a North Korean agent and taken to North Korea.

Faced with strong protests from the South Korean government and criticism from the international community, North Korea repatriated 39 people in February 1970, but 11 others, including Won Hwang, were excluded, and the 11 have yet to return home 47 years later.