The spy who came in from the North wants to go home
GWANGJU: Condemned to death twice for spying, Seo Ok-Ryol spent three decades in prison, most of it in solitary confinement.
Now aged 90, the only thing he wants to do before he dies is go home – to North Korea.
Born in the South, where he still has relatives, then a soldier and spy for the North – where he left a wife and two children – Seo epitomises the enduring divisions of the peninsula, and the way Koreans have been buffeted by the forces of history and politics.
Seo walks with a cane, and has a truculent manner, but his mind remains clear.
“I’ve done nothing wrong but loved the fatherland,” he said – adding that for him, that encompasses both North and South.
The South repatriated some 60 former long-term prisoners in 2000, mostly soldiers, guerillas and spies, following a landmark inter-Korean summit. But Seo was not eligible as he had signed a pledge of loyalty to the South to secure his release from prison, obtaining citizenship as a result.
Now activists are mounting a campaign for him and 17 other ageing ex-inmates still loyal to Pyongyang – the oldest is 94 – to be allowed to go home.
Born on an island in the South, Seo became a communist while a student at Seoul’s elite Korea University and joined the North’s forces during the Korean War, retreating with them as Americanled United Nations troops advanced.
He joined the North’s ruling Workers’ Party and was working as a teacher in Pyongyang when he was assigned to an espionage training school in 1961.
“I had to leave without so much as saying goodbye to my wife.”
Sent on a mission to the South to try to recruit a senior government official whose brother had defected North, he smuggled himself across the border by swimming the Yeomhwa river and managed to meet his parents and siblings.
But he was cold-shouldered when he tried to give the official a letter from his brother.
“‘As far as my brother is con- cerned, he is as good as dead for me. I reported to government authorities that he died during the war’,” the man told him, refusing the missive.
But he did not turn Seo in, even though – then as now – unauthorised contact with North Koreans was punishable by heavy jail terms.
His mission a failure, Seo stayed in the South for a month, constantly on edge trying to hide his code book, until a radio broadcast of a series of numbers secretly ordered him back.
But he arrived late at the pickup point and missed the rescue boat. He tried to swim the rest of the way, only for the current to sweep him back to the bank, where he was overpowered and detained by South Korean marines.
“As a spy, you are supposed to kill yourself by either swallowing a poison capsule or using weapons,” said Seo, adding: “There wasn’t even enough time to commit suicide”.
Seo says he was questioned harshly for months, beaten and deprived of sleep and food, before a military court sentenced him to death for espionage.
In 1963 Seo’s death sentence was commuted on the grounds that he was a novice spy who had failed in his mission. But he was again condemned to die in 1973, for trying to convert another inmate to communism.
His parents sold their house to finance his legal costs, and secured another commutation, but died while he was still in jail.
After three decades in prison, Seo in 1991 promised to abide by the South’s laws. But he remains unyielding in his loyalty to the North, praising it as an “egalitarian” society. — AFP