60 Korean veterans to leave RF for S Korea for good Fri.

VLADIVOSTOK, February 26 (Itar-Tass) - Sixty Sakhalin Koreans veterans are departing for South Korea on Friday for permanent residence.

They have
lived in Russia for more than half a century after the end of World War
II, and got to Sakhalin before 1945 when the island's southern half was
controlled by Japan and called Karafuto Prefecture. Japanese companies
were bringing Koreans to the island for hard labour - in coal mining,
railway construction, building of military facilities and timber logging.
After the end of the war all Japanese were evacuated from Sakhalin to the
Hokkaido Island. The Koreans were abandoned on Sakhalin by their masters.
Mass repatriation of Sakhalin's Koreans to South Korea had begun in
2000. By now more than 3,500 Koreans have left for the Korean Peninsula
for permanent residence. Apartments or rooms in homes for the elderly are
provided in various cities of the country to Sakhalin's Koreans. The
repatriation is carried out with the funds provided by Japan and South
Korea. On Thursday, 59 Koreans flew from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Seoul.
Another group comprising 120 people will be flown to South Korea on March
11-12, head of the non-governmental organisation "Separated Families of
Sakhalin Koreans" Sergei Lee Su Din said.
This organisation has now started the fulfilment of the 2010
repatriation programme. The lists of new candidates for permanent
residence in South Korea are now being complied. At least 1,000 more
Korean veterans who had been brought to Sakhalin before 1945 want to leave
for South Korea. The Korean diaspora in Sakhalin comprises 30,000 people.
Sakhalin Koreans are Russian citizens and residents of Korean descent
living on Sakhalin Island, who trace their roots to the immigrants from
the Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces of Korea during the late 1930s and
early 1940s, the latter half of the Japanese colonial era. At the time,
the southern half of Sakhalin Island, then known as Karafuto Prefecture,
was under the control of the Empire of Japan; the Japanese government
recruited and forced Korean labourers into service and shipped them to
Karafuto to fill labour shortages resulting from World War II. The Red
Army invaded Karafuto days before Japan's surrender; while all but a few
Japanese there repatriated successfully, almost one-third of the Koreans
could not secure permission to depart either to Japan or their home towns
in South Korea. For the next forty years, they lived in exile. In 1985,
the Japanese government offered transit rights and funding for the
repatriation of the original group of Sakhalin Koreans; however, only
1,500 of them returned to South Korea in the next two decades. The vast
majority of Koreans of all generations chose instead to stay on Sakhalin.
Due to differing language and immigration history, Sakhalin Koreans
may or may not identify themselves as Koryo-saram. The term "Koryo-saram"
may be used to encompass to all Koreans in the former USSR, but typically
refers to ethnic Koreans from Hamgyong province whose ancestors emigrated
to the Russian Far East in the 19th century, and then were later deported
to Central Asia. The issue of self-identification is complicated by the
fact that many Sakhalin Koreans feel that Koreans from Central Asia look
down on them.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the situation of the Sakhalin
Koreans improved as the outside world began to pay much more attention to
their situation. Starting in 1966, Park No Hak, a former Sakhalin Korean
who had earlier received permission to leave Sakhalin and settle in Japan
by virtue of his having a Japanese wife, petitioned the Japanese
government a total of 23 times to discuss the issue of the Sakhalin
Koreans with the Soviet government. His actions inspired 500,000 South
Koreans to form an organisation to work towards the repatriation of their
co-ethnics; in response, the South Korean began radio broadcasts targeted
at the Sakhalin Koreans, in an effort to ensure them that they had not
been forgotten. At the same time, Rei Mihara, a Tokyo housewife, formed a
similar pressure group in Japan, and 18 Japanese lawyers attempted to sue
the Japanese government to force them to accept diplomatic and financial
responsibility for the transportation of the Sakhalin Koreans and their
return to South Korea.
Additionally, the Soviet government finally began to permit the
Sakhalin Koreans to naturalize. However, as many as 10% continued to
refuse both Soviet and North Korean citizenship, and demanded repatriation
to South Korea. By 1976, only 2,000 more of their population had been able
to obtain permission to depart from Sakhalin, but that year, the Sakhalin
government made a public announcement that people seeking to emigrate to
South Korea could simply show up at the Immigration Office to file an
application. Within a week, they had received more than 800 such
applications, including some from North Korean citizens; this caused the
North Korean embassy to complain to their Soviet counterparts about the
new emigration policy. The Soviet authorities in the end chose for
unspecified reasons to refuse to issue exit visas to most of those
concerned, leading to the unusual case of public demonstrations about the
refusals by Korean families.
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