North Korea is where this 95-year-old child dies. Korea won’t let him go

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Korean Paju

Captivated during the Korean War and for decades of jail for refusing to abandon his political beliefs, 95-year-old Ahn Hak-Sop has one death wish to return to North Korea and be buried with his comrades.

Anne spent most of his life resisting what he calls “occupying” of America in Korea. First as a soldier in the North Korean army and later as a rebel in the country that captured him.

Refusing to abandon his unwavering support for North Korea, he denounced Anne behind a bar in the south for over 40 years.

Now frail, sick and trapped in a wheelchair, he tells him he is eager to move to North Korea one last time, and is eager to rest in the country that defined his life.

On Wednesday, Anne slowly shuffles the bridge leading to the unarmed zone (DMZ) of the South Korean Peninsula and enters North Korea, sueing permission to cross the zone, one of the heaviest militarized boundaries in the world.

Hours later, in a scrum of security and protesters, Anne was denied overland access to North Korea and sent back, as if South Korean officials were allowed to cross over to him.

Rejection was crushed.

“I miss the North, I can’t stand it,” he said, holding the North Korean flag.

“I want to be buried in a free land.”

The South Korean government has banned individuals from unauthorized contact with North Korea, and restrictions on civilians from entering the heavily strengthened DMZ. The Korean War of 1950-53 ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. In other words, North Korea and South Korea are still technically at war.

If Anne had been allowed to return, Pyongyang could present his repatriation as an iconic victory.

But for Anne, the problem is much more personal and existential. He is weakened by the illness he has been hospitalized multiple times this year, and his only wish is to be buried in North Korean soil. Or, as he calls it, “My ideological homeland, the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK).”

Anne is one of six long-term non-virified prisoners remaining in South Korea who recently asked to return north.

The Seoul government is considering “various options from a humanitarian perspective,” and officials from the Unification Ministry said cooperation from Pyongyang is needed.

Anne was born in 1930 on Ganga Island off the west coast of Korea during Japan’s brutal colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula. He grew up in turbulence and uncertainty. One brother was forced into the Japanese army, and another was abandoned. When police searched, Anne escaped and found a shelter with her aunt.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, Anne was 15 years old. Instead of celebrating, he said he felt betrayed by a declaration from General Douglas MacArthur, who placed South Korea south of the 38th Parallel under American control.

The declaration gave American officials extensive authority over political, economic and security issues in the South until the formation of a new government.

“So, seeing the declaration, I realized that we weren’t freed,” he said. “That’s how it all started. That’s why I started the anti-AU movement.”

When the Korean War began in 1950, Anne was a middle school student at Cathon, and was then the bustling city near the 38th parallel. He saw the troops surge back and forth across the newly imposed division line between the north and south. In 1952 he officially enlisted in the North Korean People’s Army and served in the Intelligence News Division.

Ahn Hak-Sop

When the war was drawn to a bloody deadlock in 1953, Anne was captured. Of the ten soldiers in his unit, he said he was the only one to survive.

If Anne signed a paper under existing Korean law at the time that waived North and its communist ideology, he would have been eligible for parole. However, he refused and remained behind the South bar for the next 42 years and six months.

Anne’s imprisonment is one of the longest endured by North Korean prisoners of war held in the South. He explained that his time was merciless. It is not merely due to physical difficulties, but the psychological pressure to abandon his beliefs.

“In the beginning, they tried to convert me through conversation,” he recalled. “When that didn’t work, they started to torture me.”

Anne claims she endured brutal punishments, including assault and exposure to frozen water.

At one point he was brought back to Ganga Island and reunited with his sisters. He refused.

“It was really painful,” he recalled.

When he was finally forgiven in 1995 on the holiday of South Korea’s Liberation Day, Anne described the moment in bitter words. He simply said, “I moved from a small, trapped prison to a large, open prison.”

Still, he said he was under close surveillance and police continued.

In 2000, amid a brief melting of political tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang, South Korea allowed 63 non-verted long-term prisoners to return north.

Anne was offered the opportunity to cross the border, but made the painful decision to stay.

People returning to North Korea were soaking in parades and banners. However, Anne said that his “mission” was unfinished and he remained in Korean soil. Despite decades in the South, he has never wavered by his belief that South Korea remains an American-influenced colony.

“I came here and came to the US ‘colonies’. …I’m fighting the United States, but I couldn’t do anything and only served time in prison,” he said.

“How do you feel embarrassed about going back? If you scream, ‘We have to do that from here, not north,’ I wouldn’t come back… After witnessing the Americans leaving this land, I decided to die. ”

“I either kick the Americans out of here or I’ll die,” he said.

Today, Anne lives in a modest home in Yongganri, just a mile away from the North Korean border where he shuns his large family and dreams of crossing.

To get it, he relies on the government’s benefits given to low-income people and the support from his acquaintances.

The walls of his home are covered with faded photographs, North Korean posters, and memorabilia of the ideological memorabilia that defined his existence. His doormat is a US flag.

“It would be too much responsive to be buried in a colony after death,” he said.

The Unified Bridge over the Imjin River in Paju, Korea, was a ceremonial intersection of summit meetings, family reunions and unusual delegations traveling between Korea.

On Wednesday, it became the site of Anne’s latest conflict with the South Korean government.

Authorities blocked his passage, citing the national security law and the lack of agreement with Pyongyang to promote his return.

North Korea stopped all communications with South Korea in 2023, making it difficult for Seoul to discuss the repatriation of Ahn and other prisoners.

Korean human rights groups expressed sympathy for Anne’s light letter, but few people expected the government to allow crossings.

After being denied permission at the border on Wednesday, Anne stepped into an ambulance waiting and was taken away.

For Anne, the rejection emphasized that he had believed in nearly 80 years. His fate is not reconciliation, but is bound by a permanent division.

“I am determined to return to my home of ideology, the home of my principles,” he said. “DPRK, the beginning of my life.”

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