[Traces of forced mobilization-part three] Korean former conscripted laborers live out last days on Russia’s Sakhalin Island

Posted on : 2010-02-10 12:30 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Koreans conscripted for labor in coal mines by Japan were unable to return to Korea following Liberation in 1945 as a result of ignorant policy decisions by the S.Korean and Japanese governments
 Russia.
Russia.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the forceful annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910. A number of issues, however, remain unresolved between South Korea and Japan. This is part three of the Hankyoreh’s series about traces of history, which has been made in hopes that both countries are able to move together toward a brighter future after having resolved remaining issues concerning conscripted labor and other human rights issues.

“So, I have ended up with three names.”

Cho Yeong-jae, 78, spoke with a respectable Gyeongsang Province dialect. Our meeting took place in Boshnyakovo (called “Nishisakutan” in Japanese), at a mining village where I arrived after a six-hour car ride northwest from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the largest city on Russia’s Sakhalin Island. The birch forests that surrounded the village had turned white from a few days of snowfall, and Boshnyakovo’s small harbor, facing the maritime province of Siberia, is said to still be frequented by Korean and Japanese boats bearing coal for burning at thermal power plants.

Cho was born in 1932 in Pungsan, a township in the county (now city) of Andong in North Gyeongsang Province. In 1942, he came to Sakhalin following his father, who had been conscripted into labor service as a coal miner. When he enrolled in the island’s Japanese school, the young man’s name became “Matsumoto Eisai,” and when Japan lost to the Soviet Union in 1945 and the entire island became Soviet territory, his name was changed once again, this time to “Yuri Cho.” Nearly 70 years have passed since then, but Cho has been unable to leave Sakhalin behind.

“When I came here in 1942, Koreans were packed into three hambajip (worker dormitories). Over here, they were mostly from Gyeongsang Province, and down at Shakhtersk they were mainly from North Korea. There were a lot of people at Kitakozawa (Telnovskiy), from Chungcheong Province and Jeolla Province. The coal is good here. If the Koreans did not follow orders, they were taken off to the takobeya (a detention facility for mine workers), and whenever someone went in there, he returned not right in the head.”

During the period of the Japanese Empire, Sakhalin was called Karafuto, which in the Ainu language means “island of birches.” Half of the island, the portion south of 50 degrees north latitude, was ceded by Russia to Japan after Japan’s victory in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. Japan subsequently went to work exploiting the island’s rich natural resources. It made up for the lack of workers by bringing people in from Japan and Korea. It has been confirmed that 7,801 Koreans (6,120 of them miners) worked at 25 of the 26 mines operated in southern Sakhalin as of late July 1944.

Eighty-seven-year-old Kim Yun-deok, whom I met in the town of Sinegorsk in central southern Sakhalin, hails from Gyeongsan City in North Gyeongsang Province. After arriving on the island in 1943 in place of his father, he worked for around two years as a miner. An estimated 43,000 Koreans were living in southern Sakhalin, including Kim, just after Liberation in August 1945. A majority of them came from what would become known as South Korea after Liberation.

For Kim, Liberation was an “indefinite leave” that came one day out of the blue. “I headed to work one day and they said I didn‘t have to work. Japan had lost, they said,” he recalled. After Liberation, Sakhalin was in pandemonium with a mixture of Soviet troops who had come south and Japanese and Koreans trying to evacuate to the mainland. The Japanese, agitated with the shock of defeat and fear of the Soviet forces, carried out massacres of Koreans at sites like the southwest Sakhalin towns of Porzaskoye (Mizuho in Japanese) and Leonidov (Kamishisuka). “We had been liberated, but they said those Japanese dumped the Koreans at Homsk (a port city in southwest Sakhalin) and went by themselves. They even say they killed the Koreans who were on board. If the Soviet forces had come just a bit later, all of the Koreans would have been dead.”

Even after the post-Liberation chaos ended, Kim was unable to return to his homeland. Through a project to repatriate Japanese from South Sakhalin beginning in December 1946, some 292,590 Japanese headed home, but the Koreans on the island were excluded as “no longer Japanese.” Kim ultimately obtained Soviet citizenship and spent another 37 years as a miner before retiring in 1982.

I met 76-year-old Ahn Bok-sun in the mining city of Uglegorsk in northeast Sakhalin. Hailing from Ulsan, she came to Sakhalin in 1942, following her father Ahn Cha-mun (1902-1980). While working at the Kitakozawa (Zelnovskiy) Mine in the northeast part of the island, he was subjected to “double conscription” in August 1944 and sent to the Japanese island of Kyushu. When the war ended, he stowed away on a boat in Hokkaido and arrived home after a journey of hardship, but he suffered from lingering health problems and was unable to do much work. Ahn said that her father walked over 400 kilometers from the southern port of Korshakov to find his wife and children.

She recalls him telling her, “It was terrible. The Nagaski Mines have you digging coal underwater. They beat us with leather straps while we were working.” In 1998, Ahn’s husband went to the bank to convert a large amount of currency ahead of a visit to his hometown in South Korea. The South Korean government has allowed Koreans in Sakhalin to visit their hometowns since 1989, thus her husband had been preparing to participate in the first hometown visit. He was followed home and killed by members of the Russian mafia.

However, the homeland that he was never able to visit viewed the family and other Korean conscripted laborers of Sakhalin as a “potential threat to security.”

According to data from the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency’s security division unearthed by the Hankyoreh at the National Archives of Korea, in 1990 the South Korean government had detectives from that division monitor the activity of Koreans living Sakhalin who were visiting their hometowns in Korea at that time 24 hours a day. Ahn said, “Now I have no husband, and I do not want to go back to Korea and leave my children alone.”

On Jan. 26, the Second Public Cemetery in the back hills of Boshnyakovo was buried in drifts of white snow. There I visited the grave of Choi Wol-ju (1905-1986), the grandmother of 58-year-old Choi Jong-guk, head of the Korean residents’ association in Uglegorsk. (Some Koreans in Sakhalin have adopted the Russian practice of wives taking their husband’s surnames.) All around were the graves of Koreans who had died on the island.

Cho Yeong-jae’s home lies five minutes by car from the back hills where the graves are located. Hanging on the wall there is a 2007 calendar from home, which he picked up when visiting Seoul for the Lunar New Year’s and Chuseok holidays. Cho said, “Now that I have lived in Russia for more than 60 years, I am more used to the name Yuri than the name Yeong-jae.”

“My wife is sick and I cannot stop thinking about my children. I want to go home, but I cannot,” he added. The South Korean government has allowed the Korean former conscripted laborers in Sakhalin to permanently return home since 1992, however, the government does not allow their children to return permanently. As a result, this had led to the criticism that the policy concerning Korean former conscripted laborers living in Sakhalin could result in another case of Korean family dispersal.

Will he also be buried in the mountain cemetery when he dies? As I left, he clasped my hand and repeatedly thanked me for visiting.

By Kil Yun-hyung

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

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