SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A 95-year-old former North Korean soldier who spent decades imprisoned in the South will continue his campaign to return to the North, an activist said Thursday, after South Korean troops stopped his symbolic border march this week.
Flanked by activists and holding a North Korean flag, Ahn Hak-sop walked toward an inter-Korean bridge in the border town of Paju on Wednesday, demanding that South Korean authorities arrange his repatriation to the North, when soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint.
Ahn, who complained of knee pain during the incident, was taken to a hospital and is now recovering at his home in Gimpo, near the capital city of Seoul, activist Cha Eun-jeong said. Cha said she expects Ahn to join a weekend protest in Seoul calling for his return to North Korea.
“He said it felt good to have an opportunity to speak his mind in front of journalists,” even though he was turned back by the soldiers, Cha said.
Ahn was born in what is now South Korea’s border island of Ganghwa in 1930, when the Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule. Japan’s defeat in World War II liberated Korea, but the peninsula was then divided into a U.S.-backed, capitalist South and a Soviet-supported, socialist North — a separation cemented by the devastating 1950–53 Korean War.
Bruh, I don’t think you know what you’re trying to accomplish, but whatever makes you happy I guess
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Yes, except that he had an opportunity to go back 20 years ago, among with 63 other people.
Those people did an interview right after they went back (translated using LLM):
By all means, please go back.
He just wants to die already and going to the north is his way to do that
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Exposure and publicity for his cause?
I meant more he probably won’t be able to do that when back in N korea
Well, there he wouldn’t have the need to talk to press about his wish to go north.
True, he would be dead.
False, he would be paraded around as a symbol of (North) Korean loyalty and steadfastness.
After the media circuit, he gets awarded a one bedroom and then left forgotten.