Spy who wants to go home

– 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 what is now South Korea, 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 is stooped and gaunt, 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 about 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 southern Korea, 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 American-led 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.

He was captured on a mission to the South and forced to pledge his alliegence to it.

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.

He was held in solitary confinement, eating meagre meals of small rice balls and salted radish, and saw several North Korean spies and sympathisers going to the gallows.

In 1963, Seo’s death sentence was commuted on the grounds that he was a novice spy who had failed in his mission. He was again condemned to die in 1973, but that was later also commuted to a life sentence.

Released on parole in 1991, Seo now just wants to go home and 25 activist groups have launched a petition asking authorities to let him and his fellow refuseniks be repatriated, saying their pledges were forced. – AFP