—Why do you want to return to North Korea?
—It’s a long story. I have to tell you what has happened in the last 70 years…
Ahn Hak-seop is a relic of the Cold War. To visit him you also have to go to a place where the Cold War is still alive.
The fence crowns a landscape of farmland. “That’s North Korea over there,” says Pastor Lee Jeok, who is driving the car. Beyond the barbed wire fence, anti-tank defenses are visible on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the border strip between the two Koreas; then the main waters of the Han River open up. On the opposite bank you can see the blue hills of the most isolated country in the world. Technically both sides are still at war.
Pastor Lee is the contact to reach Ahn. He has just passed a military checkpoint to access this area under the control of the South Korean army, due to its proximity to the North. Here, in this small village of Gimpo, about 25 miles northeast of Seoul, is Pastor Lee’s parish, the Mintongseong Peace Church. He professes the Christian faith, but when asked about it he replies that the church is dedicated to the reunification of Korea and to carrying out anti-American activities.
Regarding US President Donald Trump, who landed in South Korea on the same day in late October that EL PAÍS visited Lee, the pastor says: “It’s as if he came to inspect a vassal state.” His is an unusual parish. After driving along a tree-lined road, he stops the car in front of a house with an overgrown garden, where weeds climb everywhere, and a banner hangs at the entrance: “Immediately return Ahn Hak-seop, the world’s longest-serving prisoner of war, to the North, 42 years old.”
Once you cross the threshold, a doormat with the United States flag awaits you, positioned so that it is the first thing you step on. Inside, Ahn Hak-seop, a 95-year-old former communist soldier in the North Korean army, listens to a Soviet military march on his cellphone. A friend of the parish priest for many years, he now lives in the parish, near the border.
Ahn rests his hands on a walking stick and wears a felt hat. He was taken prisoner by the South in 1953. Convicted of espionage, he suffered brutal torture, but never signed a confession. He spent 42 years in prison and was one of the few to never change his ideology. His unwavering gaze reflects his unshakable beliefs: “People don’t realize that we are like slaves under American colonial rule,” he says of South Korea.
The South Korean press calls him a “long-time prisoner who has not converted.” He is “one of six elderly former North Korean soldiers and spies who have not yet renounced their North Korea-related communist beliefs, despite spending decades in prison in the South.”
Now that his life is coming to an end, he wants to return. A group of activists supports his cause. They organized press conferences and demonstrations to ask the Seoul government to allow them to go back. Last summer he tried to cross on foot, with the slow gait of an old man, through Panmunjom, the border village where Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un greeted each other in 2019. Ahn was arrested by the military before he could leave South Korean soil. It’s hard to understand his reasons for wanting to return to a place so many want to escape.
— I have to tell you what has happened in the last 70 years…
Ahn was born in 1930, when Korea was under Japanese rule, on Ganghwa, a border island a few miles from the parish where he now resides, in what is now South Korea. At the time, no such division existed and he identified as North Korean. He was not yet 10 years old when the world was overwhelmed by the Second World War; 15 when the war ended and the great powers that had contributed to the liberation of Korea – the United States and the Soviet Union – were arguing about the fate of the peninsula.
He says his anti-American sentiment began to take shape when US General Douglas MacArthur announced the establishment of a military government south of the 38th parallel, the line that still separates the two countries today. “My political awareness began to develop.” Korea, he says, has gone from one colonial government to another.
Before the outbreak of the Korean War, he studied in Kaesong, then under the control of South Korea and now part of the North. There he joined the Communist Youth League and participated in clandestine activities to subvert the American presence. He had run-ins with police, spent time in hiding and lived “under bushes and pine trees”.
The outbreak of war in 1950 struck him at the age of 20. China came to the aid of the North with millions of fighters, and the USSR supplied weapons. The South, with the support of the United States, contained the blitzkrieg. From the first year he remembers the Battle of Chosin. “There were many wounded Chinese volunteers; I helped with transfers (to hospitals). At the end of 1950 I went to Seoul…” He closes his eyes. He asks for a moment to think. He searches his memory, which seems shrouded in fog.
Sometimes it’s hard to follow. The interview is conducted through an interpreter. Pastor Lee approaches and places some ginseng drinks on the table, with a metallic and sweet taste. Ahn drains the bottle almost in one gulp.
In 1951 he formally joined the North Korean ranks as “second in command of Platoon 941, directly subordinate to Army Unit 52,” he reels off. This was a six-man group tasked with moving across the South, behind enemy lines, to support North Korean detachments. Their role was to provide supplies from the North. In April 1953, three months before the armistice, when his unit had been completely decimated and he was the only survivor, South Korean troops captured him. “I was in uniform,” he says. It’s a relevant detail: despite this, he was accused of espionage, and began a cycle of brutal interrogations and torture, which lasted decades. He was subjected to ideological conversion programs, through which prisoners were forced to renounce communist ideology.
“I fully met the criteria to be considered a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. As such, I should have been repatriated,” he protests. “This was a violation of international law and a crime committed by South Korea.” When asked about the torture, he lowers his chin to his hands resting on the cane and his voice cracks: “When I talk about it, my heart beats fast and I can’t sleep.”
He talks about an ice cell in which he can barely sit; of his arms dislocated to the point of breaking; of whippings with knotted ropes; of simulated drownings; of his bare feet being beaten with sticks until his nails fell off. He takes off his hat and points to the spot on the top of his head where they constantly poured ice water until he felt like he’d been hit by a rock: “It drove me to the brink of madness.” They encouraged him to sign a confession, saying it could sum up a normal life. I’ve never agreed. The abuse lasted for years.
South Korea changed in the late 1980s. Democracy has arrived. Ahn Hak-seop was finally released in 1995, thanks to pressure from human rights groups. In 2004, a government committee reported the deaths of 77 detainees linked to the ideological conversion program through torture. Subsequently, another committee recognized Ahn as a torture victim, according to a report in The New York Times.
He was released at 65; the Iron Curtain had fallen and capitalism had transformed the country. At 70 he married a woman 32 years his junior. Today he suffers from dementia and lives with a relative. He may have returned to North Korea in 2000, when Seoul arranged the voluntary return of dozens of former prisoners. He chose to stay because he felt he had to defend his ideals in the South.
He met Pastor Lee, an activist who had been in a re-education camp in the 1980s after being accused of violating martial law during the regime of South Korean dictator Chun Doo-hwan. Ahn would eventually legally adopt the pastor’s wife as his daughter.
Ahn’s recently deceased adopted daughter is the creator of the anti-American papier-mâché sculptures that fill the room. One depicts the Statue of Liberty, armed with a rifle, smoking a cigar and with dollar bills peeking from her clothes.
“North Korea is the birthplace of my ideology,” Ahn reflects. “I like socialism. The root of all problems is private ownership of the means of production. It only breeds greed. Here the children of the rich live in luxury while the others have nothing.”
Asked if he is aware that Pyongyang is accused of committing very serious human rights violations against its population, he replies: “People say that North Korea is a dictatorship. But in my opinion they are all lies. What is a democracy?” Defends Kim Jong-un: “He’s doing a good job.”
Six unconverts like him have requested permission to return to North Korea in recent months. His case is being examined by the South Korean Unification Ministry. Meanwhile, the North has not released any statement, according to the Yonhap news agency.
“Those I knew in North Korea must be dead by now. But that doesn’t matter,” confesses Ahn. “I am almost 100 years old. I have lived a long time. I have lost all affection for this country. I was born under colonial rule. I have suffered all kinds of human rights violations, and even in death, I thought that I would be buried on colonial soil, while my colleagues rested in the independent land of the North. My legs can barely support me. I have lost consciousness several times. That is why I want to go back before I die. I must die in the North.”
He acknowledges that there are things he likes about the South; the welfare state, for example, “inspired by communism”.
—And have you ever tried an American hamburger?
It’s the only time he laughs during the interview.
—I did. And it was beautiful. Much better than eating rice all the time.
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