The Korean War, 95, failed to try to return to the north

In the morning earlier this week, an unusually large crowd gathered at the IMJingang Station – the last station on the urban metro line in Seoul, which starts the closest to North Korea.

There were dozens of activists and police officers, and their attention to one man: Ahn Hack Sop, a 95 -year -old northern war prisoner who was on his way home, to the other side of the border that divides the Korean peninsula.

This was what Mr. Ahn called his last journey – he wanted to return to the north to be buried there, after he spent most of his life in South Korea, and many of him are against his will.

He had never faced it: He was removed, as expected because the South Korean government said they had no time to make the necessary arrangements.

But Mr. Ahn approached what possible.

Weak due to the pulmonary edema (fluid accumulation of the lungs), the walking department for 30 minutes from the station to the Tongil Dae -Gyo – one of the few corridors that connect South Korea to the north.

So he got out of the car about 200 meters from the bridge and walked on the final running on foot, surrounded by two supporters who hosted it.

He came up carrying a northern Korean flag, rarely seen a scene looking at and swing deeply in the south, and delivered a letter to reporters and 20 volunteers, or so they appeared in support.

“I just want to rest my body in a really independent land,” he said. “A land free of imperialism.”

Ahn Hack Sop was 23 when he was arrested by the South Koreans.

Three years ago, he was at high school when Korean governor attacked Kim El Song South. Kim’s crowd, who wanted to reunite the two Koreas, was his citizens by claiming that the south began the 1950 attack.

It was among those who believed this. He joined the North Korean people’s army in 1952 as a communication officer, then he was appointed as a unit sent to the south.

He was arrested in April 1953, three months before the armistice, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the same year. He was released after more than 42 years due to a special pardon on Korean Independence Day.

Like many other North Korean prisoners, Mr. Ann has also been classified as “redhead”, a reference to his communist sympathy, and struggled to find a suitable job.

It was not easy. He said that the government did not initially help at first, followed by agents for years. He got married, and even sponsored a child, but he never felt he really belonged.

All the time, he made his home in a small village in Jimbo, and the closest civilian can live to the border with the north.

However, in 2000, he refused the opportunity to send it to the north with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.

It was then optimistic that the relations between the two sides would improve, and that their people were able to travel back and forth freely.

But he chose to stay because he feared the departure would be to win the Americans.

“At that time, they were pushing for American military governance (in the south),” he said.

“If I go back to the north, I felt that I was only safe to convert a sleepy room to the Americans – I was abandoned by them. My conscience as a person could not allow this.”

It is not clear what was indicated other than the increasing relations between Seoul and Washington, which includes a strong military alliance that guarantees the protection of South Korea from any attack from the north.

This relationship disturbs the depth of Mr. Ahn, who has never stopped ratifying the Kim family’s propaganda – that the only thing that stops the reunification of the Korean peninsula is “imperialist America” ​​and a South Korean government that was owned by them.

He was born in 1930 In Gangua Province, Jeongjji Province, during the Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula, Mr. Ahn was the three youngest brothers. He also had two younger sisters.

Wataniya took an early root. He stated that his grandfather refused to allow him to attend the school because he “does not want to make me Japanese.” So the school began later on the usual, after the death of his grandfather.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, put an end to the Second World War and its colonialism to Korea, Mr. Ahn and his younger brother, who fled the Japanese army, were hiding in their aunt’s house at the foot of Mount Mane on Gangua Island.

“This was not a liberation – it was just a transmission of colonial rule,” he said.

“We saw the newsletter that Korea was not liberated, but the American military rule will be implemented instead. He even said that if anyone violates an American military law, they will be punished accurately under military law.”

While the Soviet Union and the United States were roaming on the Korean peninsula, they agreed to divide it. Soviets took control of the north and the United States, the south, where they established a military administration until 1948.

When Kim attacked in 1950, the South Korean government was a valid – but Mr. Ahn, like many North Koreans, was believed to be the south raised the conflict and that its alliance with Washington prevented reunification.

Once he was arrested, Mr. Ahn had many opportunities to avoid prison – he was asked to sign documents that give up the north and his communist ideology, which was called “conversion.” But he refused.

He said to the crowd, which gathered near the border on Wednesday: “Because I refused to sign the written oath from the conversion, I had to bear the endless insult, torture and violence – days full of shame and pain. There is no way to describe that suffering with words.”

The South Korean government has never responded to this particular accusation, although a special committee recognized violence in prison in 2004. Mr. Ahn’s allegations were investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Korea, an independent body that was achieved with previous human rights violations, in 2009, which found that there was a deliberate effort to overcome, which included actions of actions.

It has long been accepted in South Korea that these prisoners often faced violence behind bars.

“Whenever I regain awareness, the first thing I reviewed was my hands – to see if there is any red ink on it.”

This usually indicates that someone forced a fingerprint on the written oath of ideological conversion.

“If there is no, I think,” regardless of what they did, I won. “I felt satisfied.”

The North has changed significantly since Mr. Ahn left. Kim IL -Sung’s grandson is now running the country – a richer isolated dictatorship than it was in 1950, but it is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Mr. Ahn was not in the north in the destroyed famine in the nineties that killed hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands of others fled, and deadly trips to escape their lives there.

However, Mr. Ahn refused to suggest any humanitarian concerns in the north, and blamed the media for being biased and reporting only on the dark side of the country. He argues that North Korea is flourishing and defending Kim’s decision to send the forces to help Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The south has also changed at the time of Mr. Ann here – once a poor military dictatorship, now has become a wealthy and strong democracy. Its relationship with the north was up and down, and it returns between open hostility and desired participation.

But Mr. Ahn’s beliefs did not hesitate. He devoted the last 30 years of his life to protest a country believed to be colonizing South Korea – the United States.

Mr. Ann said to political life: “They say that human beings, unlike animals, have two types of life. One of them is an essential biological life – the type in which we speak, eat, sleep, sleep, and so on. The second is political life, and also called on social life.

“I lived under the Japanese colonial rule throughout those years. But I do not want to be buried under colonial (American) even at death.”