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The monument Hiroshima to Korean victims of the nuclear bombing　

In the lead up to US President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima on May 27, stories of Korean victims of the atomic bomb are gradually being told in the Japanese media as well.

In a May 17 article about Obama’s visit to the city, Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun reported on the activity of the Korea Atomic Bomb Victim Association, which has decided to send a delegation to Hiroshima. “In South Korea, attention is focusing on whether President [Obama] will also visit a memorial stone for Korean victims of the atomic bomb located in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park,” the paper said.

During an interview with the newspaper, Won Jeong-oh, 77, head of the association’s Seoul chapter, said that Obama should apologize to Korean survivors of the atomic bomb.

“Abe says that Japan is the only country to have been hit with an atomic bomb, but there were also Korean victims of the bomb,” said Won. Shinzo Abe is Japan‘s Prime Minister.

Shortly after the US and Japanese governments announced that Obama would visit Hiroshima, Japanese wire service Kyodo News ran several reports in which reporters quoted South Korean atomic bomb survivors living in Hapcheon, which is called the “Hiroshima of Korea.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could start [building new relationships] by having the US apologize to Japan [for dropping the atomic bomb] and having Japan apologize to various Asian countries for its wrongdoing?” a Korean atomic bomb victim named Park Nam-su, 83 who lives in Hiroshima, said in an interview in the May 13 edition of Japanese newspaper the Mainichi Shimbun.

In related news, it turns out that Obama will most likely not meet personally with atomic bomb victims, as the city of Hiroshima had strongly hoped he would. On May 16, Kyodo News quoted a US government official as saying that Obama would be unable to meet the atomic bomb victims because of time constraints.

Instead, Obama has reportedly arranged his schedule to enable him to meet with US soldiers and members of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in a bid to strengthen the US’s alliance with Japan.

Kyodo News also speculated that Obama would deliver a message about nuclear disarmament during his visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park but that the message would be short, likely only a few minutes long, and would not delve into the controversy about whether it was appropriate to drop the atomic bomb.

By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

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