The 95-year-old POW who wants to return to North Korea to die

BBC:

On a blistering morning earlier this week, an unusually large crowd had gathered at Imjingang Station – the last stop on Seoul’s metropolitan subway line that inches the closest to North Korea.

There were dozens of activists and police officers, their attention fixed on one man: Ahn Hak-sop, a 95-year-old former North Korean prisoner of war who was making his way home, to the other side of the border that divides the Korean peninsula.

It was what Mr Ahn called his final journey – he wanted to return to the North to be buried there, after spending most of his life in South Korea, much of it against his will.

He never made it across: he was turned away, as was expected because the South Korean government had said they did not have enough time to make the necessary arrangements.

But Mr Ahn came as close as he could.

Weakened by pulmonary oedema (a build up of fluid on the lungs), he could not manage the 30 minute walk from the station to the Unification Bridge – or Tongil Dae-gyo – one of the few passageways connecting South Korea to the North.

So he stepped out of the car roughly 200 metres from the bridge and walked the final stretch on foot, flanked by two supporters who steadied him.

He returned holding a North Korean flag, a sight rarely seen and deeply jarring in the South, and addressed the reporters and 20 or so volunteers who had turned up in support.

“I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land,” he said. “A land free from imperialism.”