'I've missed my parents a lot': North Korean ex-POW who left for better life abroad yearns to visit homeland
Former North Korean soldiers who chose to live abroad after the Korean War are trying to get permission to enter country after almost 60 years
After the Korean War ended in 1953, Kim Myeong Bok and 75 other North Korean prisoners of war detained in South Korea opted to live abroad rather than risk hostile welcomes in either half of their homeland. Now he wants to return home, although he may find little more than rejection and suspicion.
Amid the two Koreas' intense Cold War rivalry, they were labelled traitors, opportunists or fence-sitters. The fates of several North Korean POWs who voluntarily returned home are unknown. Many others have died abroad and now less than a dozen are believed to be alive.
Kim, now 79 and living in Brazil, is trying to return to his North Korean hometown, at the arrangement of a movie director who is making a documentary on him and his fellow ex-POWs.
He does not have the North's approval yet and may never get it, though he will at least visit the South. He knows it is probably his last chance to try to go home.
"I've missed my parents a lot, particularly my mother, who took me to a church and told me to believe in Jesus Christ," Kim said, from the remote Brazilian city of Cuiaba where he settled in 1956 as a farmer.
He lowered his head, wiping away tears when he said his mother often came to mind when he faced difficulties in life.
Kim and most of the other POWs who left the Korean Peninsula settled in South America.