Minister of Unification Kim Yung-ho speaks at the opening ceremony of "Monument for Safe Return of Five Teenage Abductees" on Seonyu Island, North Jeolla Province, May 24. Yonhap

South Korea on Friday unveiled a monument on a southwestern island in hopes of the safe return of five South Koreans abducted by North Korea in the 1970s, in the latest move to raise public awareness of the abductee issue.

North Korean agents kidnapped the five South Korean high school students from the Seonyu and Hong islands off the southwestern coast between 1977 and 1978, and they have yet to return home.

The unification ministry held a ceremony unveiling the monument dedicated to those abductees, named the Monument for Safe Return of Five Teenage Abductees, on Seonyu Island on Friday. A similar event will be held Monday on Hong Island.

The event brought together Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho; Julie Turner, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights; Lee Shin-wha, Seoul's envoy for North Korean human rights; and families of the South Korean victims.

Among the abductees, Kim Young-nam, born in 1961, was the only teen kidnapped by the North in August 1977 from Seonyu Island.

He was married in North Korea to Megumi Yokota, a Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1977 when she was 13. Yokota is a symbol of the Japanese people abducted by North Korea.

The monument features an image of the five teens returning home while swimming in the sea, aided by star-shaped buoys, a symbol of hope and dreams, the ministry said.

The image of the buoys was created with the motif of three forget-me-nots, a symbol of South Korean abductees, detainees and unrepatriated prisoners of the 1950-53 Korean War.

With the establishment of the monuments, the government hopes to express its strong commitment to resolving the abductee issue and encourage people to join efforts to bring them back home, according to the ministry.

Currently, six South Koreans are being detained in North Korea, including three missionaries — Kim Jung-wook, Choi Chun-gil and Kim Kook-kie — whose whereabouts and fates are unknown.

Separately, 516 South Koreans have yet to return home among an estimated 3,835 people who were kidnapped by North Korea after the Korean War, according to government data.

At least 60,000 prisoners of war (POWs) are also estimated to have not come back home or gone missing after being detained in North Korea. A total of 80 POWs have returned home since 1994, but only nine had been alive as of March. (Yonhap)