Repatriation

In 1992, two released political prisoners from North Korea settled in the South Korean town where documentarian Dong-won Kim lived. This aroused his interest for the fate of these forgotten men, who had been sent to South Korea as spies and were apprehended there. They served prison sentences of thirty years or more because they refused to be “converted.” All of them stuck to their faith in communism and the unification of North and South Korea. For twelve years, Dong-won followed the repatriation of six men, like 72-year-old Cho Chang-son, who almost died in his cell, Kim Suk-myung, who is included in the Guinness Book of Records as the man with the longest prison sentence served (45 years), and Ryu Han-wook, whose body became half paralysed in jail. How did they endure the many years of torture and how are they doing, now that they have been released? These are the questions posed to them by the filmmaker. The most satisfactory answer is given by the man who says that the pain inflicted on them precisely justified their resistance. Now they are returning to North Korea little by little, thanks to President Kim Dae-jung, who repatriated 63 “unconverted prisoners” in 2000.