Korea Encounters Trials of Korean atomic bomb survivors

Atomic bomb survivor Kim Chang-hwan lives in one of Seoul's worst slum areas in Sungin-dong, after selling all of his inherited land to pay for medication, in this March 16, 1968 file photo. / Korea Times archive

By Matt VanVolkenburg

Every Aug. 15, presidential speeches on Liberation Day make no mention of the Allied contribution to defeating Japan. This is reflected in history textbooks which focus on the independence movement and make only the slightest mention of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which forced the Japanese Empire to surrender. This may be why the Korean victims of these bombings are so often overlooked.

Thousands of Koreans moved to Japanese cities in the 1920s and 1930s, pushed out of Korea by colonial agricultural policies and the depression. In the 1940s, thousands more were forcibly mobilized and sent to work in factories to aid the war effort. As a result, when the atomic bombs fell there were around 50,000 Koreans living in Hiroshima, and 20,000 more in Nagasaki.

Of the 70,000 Koreans in both cities, many of whom lived near the hypocenters of the blasts or worked outdoors, 40,000 died within a week. Around 23,000 survivors returned to Korea, while 8,000 remained in Japan.

Those who returned to Korea faced discrimination and survivors without noticeable burns tried to hide their background. The Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee governments, appreciative of the role the bombs played in the liberation, were not keen to draw attention to their negative effects and tended to see the survivors as a problem Japan should deal with. It was not until the mid-1960s that the Korean media even acknowledged the existence of Korean survivors.

In 1967 survivors formed the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Relief Association, which asked the Korean government for financial aid and the construction of a medical center. These requests went unmet. By 1973 the association's seven branches had registered 9,362 survivors.

Japan enacted laws to fund treatment of atomic bomb survivors in the 1950s and 1960s, but Korean survivors outside Japan were not eligible. When Son Chin-du, a South Korean citizen, applied to be treated in Fukuoka in 1971, he was denied, but after filing a suit against the Japanese government, court after court ruled in his favor. By the late 1970s Koreans who came to Japan could get treatment, but not those remaining in their home country.

Though the Japanese government prevented funding for treatment of Korean citizens abroad, in the early 1980s it sponsored medical visits to Japan for 349 Korean survivors. In 1990 Japan established a 4 billion yen fund for Korean atomic bomb survivors which was used to build a welfare center in Hapcheon County, South Gyeongsang Province, where many of the survivors had originated from and returned to after liberation.

As Korean survivors blamed Japan for the atomic attacks, they felt the Japanese government's blocking of funded treatment and medical allowances for them was discriminatory. In response, they launched numerous lawsuits in order to challenge these laws, an undertaking that would never have been possible without the aid of Japanese activists.

In 1971, Japanese survivor?Toyonaga Keisaburo visited Seoul and, shocked at the “shack” the Korean Relief Association operated out of, returned home and established the Citizens Relief Council for Korean Atomic Bomb Victims. In 1973, another Japanese civic group funded the construction of the first?welfare center in Hapcheon. That same year peace activist Munetoshi Fukagawa finally discovered what had happened to the Korean laborers he had supervised and befriended at a Mitsubishi factory in Hiroshima. After leaving Japan in September 1945, their ship sank in a typhoon, drowning 246 of them. His years-long search brought their fate to light and led to their reburial in Korea.

With the help of Japanese activists like these, five cases successfully moved their way through the courts and by 2015 survivors in South Korea could receive benefits, seek treatment locally and bill the Japanese government.

The same level of support has not been shown by the Korean government, however. In 2002 an association of second-generation survivors was formed and pushed for the creation of a law to provide them with medical assistance. After eight years of stalling by the National Assembly, a toothless Special Act to Support Atomic Bomb Survivors was passed in May 2016. That it was passed a week before then-U.S. President Obama visited Hiroshima suggests the Korean government may have wished to avoid being seen as hypocritical when it asked the U.S. president to draw attention to the Korean atomic bomb victims it had ignored for decades.

Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr.