In the mountains of southeastern South Korea, Venerable Popta lives a monastic life as the abbot of Eunhae Temple, meditating daily and receiving visitors at his traditional Korean home.

But while he may not leave the hermitage much these days, this unsuspecting Buddhist monk has made more trips to North Korea than nearly any other outsider, visiting hundreds of times over the course of two decades. 

After his first visit to Pyongyang in the late 1980s, Popta founded the Buddhist Association for a Peaceful Unification with the goal of uniting the Koreas through Buddhism.

He would go on to act