ID :
12647
Wed, 07/16/2008 - 10:36
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Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/12647
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Sakhalin commemorates Koreans felling victim of Japanese militarism
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, July 16 (Itar-Tass) - The commemoration of Koreans who fell victim of Japanese militarism during the Second World War, passed in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the administrative centre of the Sakhalin Region, on Tuesday.
The ceremony was attended by a South Korean delegation. It includes sons and daughters (already of venerable age) of Koreans who had been forcibly mobilised by Japanese to work in Sakhalin between 1939 and 1945.
The southern part of the island was under the Japanese rule between 1905 and 1945.
According to historians, 40,000 young men had been dispatched toSakhalin from the Korean Peninsula. They mined coal, built a railway, fell logs and performed other arduous work. Many of them died of neck-breaking labour.
Press secretary of the committee on international, foreign economic and inter-regional relations of the Sakhalin Region Tatyana Polishchyuk said that the Korean delegation intends to study lists of their fellow countrymen, buried in Sakhalin during Word War II, to visit cemeteries and to get acquainted with statistical data in the cities of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Korsakov, Kholmsk, the villages of Sinegorsk and Bykov where Koreans, mobilised by Japan for work in the island, predominantly lived.
The diaspora of Sakhalin Koreans now numbers 30,000. They are descendants of Koreans of the first wave of resettlement, regarding themselves up to this time "slaves of World War II" and demandingcompensations from Japan. They also demand that South Korea should offer them an opportunity to return to their historic homeland.
The ceremony was attended by a South Korean delegation. It includes sons and daughters (already of venerable age) of Koreans who had been forcibly mobilised by Japanese to work in Sakhalin between 1939 and 1945.
The southern part of the island was under the Japanese rule between 1905 and 1945.
According to historians, 40,000 young men had been dispatched toSakhalin from the Korean Peninsula. They mined coal, built a railway, fell logs and performed other arduous work. Many of them died of neck-breaking labour.
Press secretary of the committee on international, foreign economic and inter-regional relations of the Sakhalin Region Tatyana Polishchyuk said that the Korean delegation intends to study lists of their fellow countrymen, buried in Sakhalin during Word War II, to visit cemeteries and to get acquainted with statistical data in the cities of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Korsakov, Kholmsk, the villages of Sinegorsk and Bykov where Koreans, mobilised by Japan for work in the island, predominantly lived.
The diaspora of Sakhalin Koreans now numbers 30,000. They are descendants of Koreans of the first wave of resettlement, regarding themselves up to this time "slaves of World War II" and demandingcompensations from Japan. They also demand that South Korea should offer them an opportunity to return to their historic homeland.
