The desire to return home of North Korean spies "trapped" in South Korea

Former North Korean spy Kim Young-sik (Photo: Getty)

When Kim Young-sik was in his 20s, he felt he could no longer see his country divided. He wanted to help eliminate the border between the two Koreas, as well as “remove” the influence of foreign countries that indirectly divided the peninsula in two.

In 1962, he boarded a North Korean spy ship headed for South Korea as a radio engineer.

“I feel angry when I think about the outside forces that are dividing us and making us kill each other. I am young and I still love my family in North Korea. We live happily and are inseparable. Even so, I decided to go to the South because my country is divided,” Mr. Kim said.

The spy ship took the long route to Ulsan to avoid detection, almost reaching Japan before turning back towards South Korea’s east coast. But before Mr Kim could carry out his mission, his ship was captured. He spent some 26 years in prison before being released. He is now a naturalised South Korean. But for him, this has never been home.

“Life in prison is quite difficult. In Korean society, you have to change your ideals. But I didn’t want to do that, so there were certain difficulties,” Mr. Kim said.

Mr. Kim, now nearly 90, is one of 20 North Korean spies in South Korea who are desperate to return home. The recent thaw in relations between the two Koreas seems to have renewed hope among men who have spent their entire lives on the other side of the border that they can return home for the last time.

In the view of these former spies, the 1953 armistice that divided the Korean peninsula was a bad decision.

“If you go to the border, you can see they have barbed wire. Did we (the two Koreas) make those fences? It was the outside forces who did it. They stopped us from moving in our country. How can you say it’s good? Even if I lie down, I will never say it’s good,” Kim said.

However, the hope of returning home still makes the men, most of whom are 80-90 years old and have spent more than half their lives in Korea, feel expectant.

“I shed tears of happiness. I have hope that cases like ours will be resolved soon,” Yang Hee-chul, an 82-year-old former spy, said with hope about the outcome of the April 27 inter-Korean summit.

In 2000, when the leaders of North and South Korea first met, South Korea sent back 63 North Korean spies. Dozens of other North Koreans who were in prison at the time later applied to be repatriated, but nearly 20 years have passed and they have not received any news. Many could not wait and died in South Korea.

North Korean spy Seo Ok-yeol (Photo: AP)

Seo Ok-yeol, 89, a former North Korean spy, has become a South Korean citizen after serving 29 years in prison. Seo volunteered for the Korean People's Army in 1950-1953 and was trained as a spy after the war ended.

Mr. Seo was captured by South Korea in 1961 when he swam across a river on the inter-Korean border on what he called a mission to “promote the unification of the Korean peninsula.”

For people like Mr. Seo, holidays are the times when he feels most depressed. “I hate birthdays and holidays. I only stay home on those days because I know that I will miss my family back home even more if I see everyone having fun together on those occasions,” Mr. Seo said.