‘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