Society

01:00, 02.10.2007 | Sakhalin Region

South Korea is planning a homecoming over the next two months for hundreds of Koreans forcibly relocated by the Japanese to work on a remote Russian island in the Far East during World War II.

In the early 1940s, Japanese colonial authorities dragooned about 150,000 Koreans to work on Sakhalin Island in coal mines and pulp mills, as well as to serve Japanese forces posted on the island. They were left stranded with no official status after the Japanese ceded sovereignty over the island to Russia after its defeat in World War II.
As a result of three-way talks between Seoul, Japan and Russia that began in the early 1990s, 1,685 of the surviving laborers have returned home under a resettlement program that includes free housing and a monthly allowance.
The next batch of elderly returnees, 610 strong, will be the second-largest group to return home from Russia after 900 who came back in 2000. The first of the returnees were to arrive Friday. All will be settled in free rental apartments in the western port city of Incheon near Seoul and receive a monthly allowance of about 400,000 won ($425).
There are still 3,200 former Korean war laborers living in Sakhalin, of which 1,800 have expressed an interest in returning to South Korea. For years, Japan maintained that it had no legal responsibility for the Koreans abandoned on Sakhalin under the terms of a 1965 treaty with South Korea. It has since contributed 6.5 billion yen ($58 million) to help with the resettlement program on "humanitarian grounds."
Japan annexed Korea in 1910, holding it for 35 years until the end of World War II.