Ahn Yong-soo, whose brother was a South Korean prisoner of war captured by communist Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and sold to North Korean military officers, poses for photographs with a picture of his brother, at his home in Seoul, South Korea, February 12, 2019. REUTERS/Park Ju-min
HANOI/SEOUL (Reuters) - In 1966, Ahn Hak-soo was one of more than 300,000 South Korean soldiers fighting alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War when he was captured by the North Vietnamese army and handed over to Hanoi's key ally, North Korea.
North Korea, having fought the U.S.-backed South to a standstill in another brutal Cold War conflict a decade earlier, used Ahn in propaganda broadcasts, but he was never seen by his family again.