Korean military military prisoner, 95 years old, did not try to return north

In the brilliant morning of the beginning of this week, an unusually large crowd gathered at the Zhyzhingan station – the last stop on the metro line Seoul, which approaches North Korea closer.

There were dozens of activists and police officers, their attention was recorded on one person: en Hak-Sop, 95-year-old former prisoner of North Korean prisoner who made his way home to the other side of the border that divides the Korean Peninsula.

This is what Mr. called his last journey – he wanted to return north to be buried there by spending most of his life in South Korea, most of him against his will.

He never overcame him: he was turned away as expected because the South Korea government said they lacked time to make the necessary arrangements.

But Mr. Anne approached him.

Underlying with pulmonary edema (fluid extensions on the lungs), it was unable to control a 30 -vilish petition from the station to the bridge of the association – or Tongil Dae -gyo – one of the few passages connecting South Korea north.

Thus, he got out of the car approximately 200 meters from the bridge and walked on the last site on foot, on the side of two fans who stable it.

He returned, holding the North Korean flag, the spectacle rarely saw and deeply caused the south, and appealed to journalists and 20 volunteers who came to support.

“I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land,” he said. “Land free from imperialism.”

Anne Hak-Sop was 23 years old when it was captured by the South Koreans.

Three years earlier, he attended high school when the then North Korean head Kim Il-Sen attacked south. Kim, who wanted to reunite two Korea, rallied his countrymen, saying that the south initiated the 1950 attack.

En was among those who believed in it. He joined the North Korean army in 1952 as a communications officer, and was later appointed a subdivision that was sent south.

He was captured in April 1953, three months before the truce, and sentenced him to life imprisonment the same year. It was released for more than 42 years from a special pardon on Korean Independence Day.

Like many other North Korean prisoners, Mr. was also called “Ruda”, a reference to his communist sympathies, and he fought to find the proper work.

It was not easy, he said BBC in an earlier interview in July. At first, the government did not help very much, he said, the agents followed him for years. He married and even raised the child, but never felt it really belong.

Throughout the time, he spent his house in a small village in Gimpo, closer than a civilian man to reach the border from the north.

However, in 2000 he refused to go north with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.

Then he was optimistic that the connections would improve between them, that their people would be able to travel freely here.

But he decided to stay because he was afraid to leave the victory for the Americans.

“At the time, they pushed the US military (in the south),” he said.

“If I came back to the north, I would feel that I just handed over my own bedroom to the Americans – releasing it. I conscience just couldn’t allow it.”

It is unclear what he meant, except for the growing connection between Seoul and Washington, which includes a strong military union that guarantees South Korea’s protection from any attack from the north.

This relationship is deeply disturbed by Mr. -Ann, who never stopped believing in the propaganda of the Kim family – that the only thing that stopped the reunification of the Korean Peninsula was “imperialist America”, and the South Korea government that was for them.

Born in 1930 In Gangva County, Gungi province, during the colonial control of the Korean Peninsula of Japan, Mr. was the youngest of three brothers. He also had two younger sisters.

Patriotism has taken root early. His grandfather refused to allow him to attend school because “I didn’t want to force me to the Japanese,” he recalled. So he started school later than usual after his grandfather died.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, bringing the end of World War II and colonization of Korea, Mr. and his younger brother, who left the Japanese military, hid in the aunt’s house at the foot of Mount Mani on the island of Gangva.

“It was not a release – it was just a transfer of colonial management,” he said.

“The leaflet (we saw) said that Korea was not released, but instead the US military will be implemented. He even said that if anyone violates the US military legislation, they would be strictly punished under military legislation.”

As the Soviet Union and the US overcame the Korean Peninsula, they agreed to share it. The Soviets took control of the North and the USA, the south, where they created the military administration until 1948.

When Kim attacked in 1950, the South Korean government was on the spot – but Mr., like many northern Koreans, believed that the South caused a conflict and that his alliance with Washington prevented the reunification.

After he was captured, Mr. -An Ann had several chances of avoiding the prison – he was asked to sign the documents, abandoning the north and its communist ideology, which was called “transformation”. But he refused.

“As I refused to sign a written oath of transformation, I had to endure endless humiliation, torture and violence – days filled with shame and pain. There is no way to completely describe these suffering with words,” he said the crowd near the border on Wednesday.

The South Korean government has never responded directly to this specific charges, although a special commission recognized prison in 2004. Direct allegations of Mr. Ana were investigated on the truth and reconciliation of the South Korean commission, an independent body investigating past human rights violations in 2009, which revealed that deliberate efforts to force his transformation that included torture.

South Korea has long been accepted that such prisoners often met with violence.

“Every time I renewed consciousness, the first thing I checked is my hands – to find out if there is a red ink,” Mr. recalled in my July interview.

Usually this indicates that someone has forced a imprint on the written oath of ideological conversion.

“If it wasn’t, I would think,” No matter what they did, I won. “And I felt satisfied.”

The north has changed significantly after Mr. Kim Il -Sen’s grandson now runs the country – a clumsy dictatorship that was richer than it was in 1950, but remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Mr. -n Ann was not in the north for the destructive famine in the 1990s, which killed hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands of others escaped, making deadly travel to avoid their lives.

Mr. -n en, however, rejected the proposal for any humanitarian care in the north, accusing the media of prejudice and only reports of the dark side of the country. He claims that North Korea flourishes and defends Kim’s decision to send troops to help Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The south also changed during Mr. Ana’s times – once a poor military dictatorship, now a wealthy, powerful democracy. In his relations with the north were ups and falls, hesitating between open hostility and hope.

But Mr. Ana’s beliefs did not hesitate. For the last 30 years of his life, he has devoted the protest of the country, which, in his opinion, is still colonized by South Korea – the United States.

“They say that humans, unlike animals, have two types of life. One is the main biological life – the kind where we talk, eat, defecation, sleep and so on. The second is a political life, which is also called social life. If you deprive a person of your political life, they are no different from the robot,” Mr.

“I lived under Japanese colonial management all these years. But I do not want me to be buried at (American) colonialism even in death.”