Posted on 08/21/2025 7:40:55 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Ahn Hak-sop volunteered to fight for the North Korean army in 1952 but was captured by South Korean soldiers in April 1953, months before the fighting stopped with the armistice. 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 on 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at euronews.com ...
Guess he wants to go back North so they can starve him to death.
Senility got to him.
Tew him to say hewwow to his deaw weader when he gets thewe.
Let him go. But first pin a piece of paper on his back. It should say, “Thanks for all the secret info, pal.”
That should give the old guy an interesting welcome.
Sounds to me like he had his chance and turned it down. He's 93 now. Pretty sure almost everyone he knew in the North is dead by now anyway.
So send him back. Both North and South should be happy.
Exactly.
They won’t take him back. They’d have to feed him. Like that black army deserter this old guy is not enough of a propaganda tool anymore.
As for that deserter the UCMJ/JAG should have allowed the guy to serve out his enlistment in Liberia on a private’s pay. No jail. Freedom-if that’s what you call it.
the article says he was imprisoned ffor more than 40 years?
He is silly and probably senile man. Let him go to North Korea. Oddly he will be treated well as a political statement. It has no consequence. Let him go.
“Sounds to me like he had his chance and turned it down. He’s 93 now. Pretty sure almost everyone he knew in the North is dead by now anyway.”
Two chances then. It’s a total lie. The POWs were given a choice in 1953
Let the poor guy go.
It might be for his own good if he didn't, but he may have family there, let him go.
"Unconverted long-term prisoners" is the North Korean term for northern loyalists imprisoned in South Korea who never renounced Juche. The North Korean government considers them to be "pro-reunification patriotic fighters", while South Korean scholars have described them as "pro-communist spies"...
...Juche, officially the Juche idea, is a component of Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism, the state ideology of North Korea and the official ideology of the Workers' Party of Korea. North Korean sources attribute its conceptualization to Kim Il Sung, the country's founder and first leader.
He lives in Gimpo? It’s no wonder he has knee pain.
To me, The South Korean government should have released him, because if he was just a non citizen in SK, it was a waste of life.
As soon as he crosses the border to the North, they will shoot him as s spy.
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