‘I want to be buried in a land of a sovereign’ – the 95-year-old Korean POW wants to die in the North
[…]
“I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land,” he said. “A land free from imperialism.”
[…]
in 2000, he turned down the chance to be sent back to the North along with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.
He had been optimistic then that ties between the two sides would improve, that their people would be able to travel back and forth freely.
But he chose to stay because he feared leaving would be a win for the Americans.
“At the time, they were pushing for US military governance [in the South],” he said.
“If I returned to the North, it would’ve felt like I was just handing over my own bedroom to the Americans - vacating it for them. My conscience as a human being just couldn’t allow that.”
[…]
[after being tortured in prison] “Whenever I regained consciousness, the first thing I checked was my hands - to see if there was any red ink on them,” Mr Ahn recalled in his July interview.
That usually signalled that someone had forced a fingerprint onto a written oath of ideological conversion.
“If there wasn’t, I’d think, ‘No matter what they did, I won’. And I felt satisfied.”
[…]
Mr Ahn, however, dismissed the suggestion of any humanitarian concerns in the North, blaming the media for being biased and only reporting on the dark side of the country. He argues that North Korea is prospering and defends Kim’s decision to send troops to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
[…]
“I lived under Japanese colonial rule all those years. But I don’t want to be buried under [American] colonial rule, even in death.”
anything I cut out was just the BBC writer saying stuff like ‘we’re not sure what he meant by ‘giving his bedroom over to the americans’’, when his message is clear, death to imperialism!
the article does contain a video of him giving a speech
He was captured in April 1953, three months before the armistice, and sentenced to life in prison the same year. He was released more than 42 years later because of a special pardon on the Korean independence day.
Like many other North Korean prisoners, Mr Ahn too was labelled a “redhead”, a reference to his communist sympathies, and he struggled to find a proper job.
Fuck, this guy was imprisoned and tortured for 42 fucking years. Then couldn’t even live a normal life after being released.
I probably shouldnt have omitted this part, ty for posting.
Also
As the Soviet Union and the US tussled over the Korean peninsula, they agreed to to divide it. The Soviets took control of the North and the US, the South, where they set up a military administration until 1948.
When Kim attacked in 1950, a South Korean government was in place - but Mr Ahn, like so many North Koreans, believes the South provoked the conflict and that its alliance with Washington prevented reunification.
Is a a WILD way to sum up the Korean war in just three sentences. “It was just a little USSR-USA ‘tussle’, then Kim attacked! >:( Some propagandised people think the US was somehow involved! The end.”
“Please ignore all the labor strikes in the south being violently attacked and put down by Japanese collaborators who ignored elections happening elsewhere in the country. Just focus entirely on the response by the
legitimate, democratically elected governmentKim Il Sung regime.”
Honestly, I appreciate them allowing him to seemingly fully express his views, even if they feel the need to insert their own bullshit. Often, dissent is not treated with enough dignity to allow someone to speak for themselves for more than three sentences, and as regards the DPRK, it hardly gets even that most of the time.
