The Last Battle of Ahn Hak-sop: Why a 95-Year-Old POW Wants to Die in North Korea

Ahn Hak-sop: Why a 95-Year-Old POW Wants to Die in North Korea

In the divided landscape of the Korean Peninsula, where ideology and geopolitics have torn families apart for more than seven decades, one frail old man is waging what may be his final battle. His name is Ahn Hak-sop, a 95-year-old former North Korean soldier, dissident, and unconverted prisoner of war. His dying wish is heartbreakingly simple: to return to North Korea, the land he calls his “homeland of ideology,” and be buried alongside his fallen comrades.

But standing between him and that wish is the most heavily fortified border in the world, the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and a South Korean government unwilling to let him cross.

Ahn’s story reads like a living chronicle of the turbulence that shaped modern Korea. Born in 1930 under Japanese colonial rule, he grew up watching his family torn apart, one brother forced into the Japanese army, another deserting, and himself on the run from authorities. By the time Japan surrendered in 1945, Ahn was just 15, yet already disillusioned. Instead of freedom, he saw American troops occupying the South, cementing his lifelong opposition to U.S. influence.

When the Korean War erupted in 1950, Ahn was a student in Kaesong, a frontline city caught between shifting armies. Two years later, he enlisted with the North Korean People’s Army, serving in military intelligence. But his war ended in 1953, when he was captured by the South. Out of his entire unit, he was the only survivor. That capture would shape the next 42 years of his life.

The Longest Prisoner of War

South Korea gave captured North Korean soldiers a way out: renounce the North, sign a paper rejecting communism, and they would be freed. Ahn refused. To him, it was not just a document, it was betrayal. And so he spent 42 years and six months behind bars, one of the longest imprisonments endured by any North Korean POW in the South.

He recalls his prison years as relentless, not only for the beatings and punishments he alleges, but for the psychological warfare. Authorities brought him face-to-face with his sisters, who tearfully begged him to renounce the North. He stood firm. When he was finally pardoned in 1995, he described it not as freedom, but as a transfer: “from a small and locked-up prison to an open and big prison.” Even outside, he remained under surveillance, watched by police, and ostracized by many South Koreans.

In 2000, a rare thaw in inter-Korean relations allowed dozens of long-term unconverted prisoners to return to North Korea. Sixty-three men seized the opportunity, welcomed with parades and banners in Pyongyang. Ahn, however, made the agonizing decision to stay.

His reason was ideological: he felt his mission was not finished. “I came here, to a U.S. colony, fighting against the U.S., but I couldn’t do anything and only served time in prison,” he later said. To go North then, he believed, would be to leave in defeat. He vowed instead to remain in the South until the Americans left.

Now nearing the end of his life, Ahn has changed his mind. Frail, confined to a wheelchair, and frequently hospitalized, he says he can no longer carry the burden of unfinished missions. What he longs for is closure, a final crossing into North Korea to die on the soil he believes he belongs to.

Earlier this week, Ahn shuffled to the Unification Bridge, the symbolic crossing point into the DMZ, waving a North Korean flag and pleading to be allowed passage. Protesters joined his call, urging officials to honor his humanitarian request. But South Korean authorities, citing national security law and the lack of any agreement with Pyongyang, denied him. He was escorted away in an ambulance, crushed yet unbroken in spirit.

For Ahn, the request is personal. But for governments, it is political. If Seoul allows him to cross, Pyongyang could frame it as a propaganda victory: a former POW, once held captive by the South, choosing in his final days to return home. At a time when inter-Korean communications are frozen and relations are at one of their lowest points in decades, that risk is too much for the South. Yet, there is also the humanitarian dilemma.

Ahn is one of only six surviving unconverted prisoners in South Korea. For them, the desire to be repatriated is not about politics but about identity, dignity, and final rest. Human rights advocates have urged Seoul to act compassionately, but few expect a breakthrough soon.

A Man Alone with His Beliefs

Today, Ahn lives in a modest home just a mile from the border he cannot cross. His walls are decorated with North Korean posters and fading photographs of comrades long gone. His doormat is a U.S. flag, a quiet act of defiance that has defined his entire existence.

Shunned by family, sustained by government benefits and support from acquaintances, Ahn waits. To him, being buried in South Korea, what he still calls “a U.S. colony”, would be the ultimate insult. “It would be too much of a resentment to be buried in a colony even after death,” he says, gripping his flag.

Whether Ahn will be granted his dying wish remains uncertain. What is clear is that his story embodies the tragedy of the Korean Peninsula itself: a man whose entire life has been bound not by reconciliation, but by division, ideology, and a war that technically never ended.

At 95, Ahn Hak-sop has no illusions left. “I am determined to go back to the home of my ideology, the home of my principles,” he says. “DPRK, the beginning of my life.”

For him, the war has never ended—and perhaps never will.

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