Samuel Len is the head of the AI Contents Team 2 at The Korea Times. He was previously the head of the Politics & City Desk at The Korea Times, as well as Seoul correspondent for Reuters news and other international news media.
After 25 years, ex-prisoner’s wish tests Seoul’s resolve
Samuel Len, Politics & City Desk Editor
By Samuel Len
Ahn Hak-sop, once deemed a threat to the South Korean state, now lies bedridden at the age of 95, his frail voice carrying one final wish: to die and be buried in the North, among comrades who shared his decades-long struggle and ideology.
Ahn, a former North Korean guerrilla and one of the oldest surviving “non-converted long-term prisoners” spent 42 years in a South Korean prison after being captured in April 1953 under the National Security Act. He was released in 1995, but unlike 63 of his fellow ideological prisoners repatriated to the North in 2000 under the Kim Dae-jung administration, Ahn stayed behind.
He said then that his mission — “resistance until U.S. troops leave the peninsula” — was not yet finished.
Now, as his health deteriorates due to a pulmonary edema — fluid buildup in the lungs — and other age-related ailments, Ahn has shifted his stance. Last month, he formally petitioned the Ministry of Unification, requesting permission to cross the border at Panmunjeom (truce village inside the Joint Security Area) and return to North Korea.
“I should have been treated as a prisoner of war,” Ahn said at a recent rally in Seoul, where he appeared in a wheelchair. “Now I want to return to where those who shared my fate are buried.”
The South Korean government is conducting a preliminary review of his case. Unification ministry officials visited Ahn’s hospital room on July 23 to assess his health, discuss his motivations and examine the legal and diplomatic implications of such a request.
But Seoul’s options are limited — and politically fraught.
North Korea has been unresponsive to recent South Korean repatriation overtures, including a high-profile case in July involving six North Koreans who had drifted into southern waters. Although those individuals expressed a desire to return and were handed over at sea, Pyongyang never officially acknowledged the exchange.
In Ahn’s case, where ideological symbolism carries profound weight, the North’s silence may speak volumes.
Complicated legacy
Ahn’s name may be unfamiliar to younger South Koreans, but for decades he embodied a bitter chapter of the Cold War: that of captured North Korean agents who refused to renounce their allegiance to Pyongyang. Many like him endured isolation and ideological pressure in prison, resisting so-called "conversion education." Some were tortured. Others never left prison alive.
Although Ahn was eventually freed, his life in the South has been marked by marginalization. His supporters say his ideological conviction remained unchanged. Now, they argue, his final wish should be honored as a matter of dignity and humanitarianism.
There is precedent for such appeals.
The repatriation of 63 unconverted prisoners back in 2000 was hailed as a goodwill measure tied to the first inter-Korean summit. But that was a different era. The North today is largely closed off, its leadership belligerent, with cross-border dialogue virtually frozen since 2019.
Even if Seoul decides to approve Ahn’s return, it cannot guarantee Pyongyang will accept him.
Humanitarian organizations have urged the government to pursue a formal dialogue, potentially through the United Nations Command or Red Cross channels. But some officials and analysts warn that doing so could set a troubling precedent for sympathizers of the North Korean regime, heightening domestic political tensions.
Final march
On Saturday, Ahn was wheeled into a rally near Government Complex Seoul in the central part of the city, surrounded by supporters waving banners urging the government to “Let Him Go Home.” He sat quietly, listening to speeches with the weariness of a man whose time is running short.
“I can no longer walk on my own,” he told the crowd. “But I want to leave here before I die — not in secret, not through a third country, but through Panmunjeom, like my comrades did.”
His plea to return through the official crossing at Panmunjom resonates far beyond his personal ordeal, reflecting a principle enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948: “Democracy is based on the recognition of the inherent dignity and equal rights of all human beings.”