On Feb. 9, 1954, 76 Korean and 12 Chinese POWs set sail from Incheon, South Korea to Madras, India to begin uncertain new lives in an undecided country.

Diehard anti-communists, traitors to South Korea, or intellectuals who transcended Cold War ideologies? This tiny handful of Korean War POWs who rejected both North and South Korea for neutral nations have been romanticized and demonized in various ways over the decades, but their motivations were much more complex than they first appeared.

At the end of the Korean War, all POWs — regardless of which side they fought for during the conflict