800 Ex-Labor Slaves to Return Home From Sakhalin Next Month
About 800 former Korean forced laborers living on Sakhalin will return home and settle at an apartment complex in Ansan, Kyonggi-do, next month.
Source : Korea Times
About 800 former Korean forced laborers living on Sakhalin will return home and settle at an apartment complex in Ansan, Kyonggi-do, next month.
The repatriation of the elderly Koreans is being arranged by the Korea National Red Cross.
Those Koreans are part of a group of slave laborers who were forcibly sent to the island during World War II by the Japanese colonial government.
The Red Cross yesterday held a ceremony to celebrate the completion of the apartments for the ex-laborers with more than 1,000 officials and noted figures attending.
A Red Cross official said a total of 816 repatriated Koreans will be housed at the apartment complex.
The Red Cross has so far successfully arranged the permanent return of 535 former slave laborers from Sakhalin since September 1989, when the first batch of 40 returned to Korea.
Thus, the number of repatriated Koreans from Sakhalin will rise to 1,351 next month.
The construction project for the apartments for the returning Koreans was launched jointly by the Red Cross of both Japan and Korea in July 1997.
The Japanese government provided funds for the building the settlements, taking responsibility for the forced labor and the pains brought to the Korean victims after the war, while the Korean side purchased the land for the apartment.
Most of the former forced laborers to settle in Ansan are in their 80s and 90s.
The government plans to grant 450,000 won in livelihood subsidies to them every month.
Both governments of the neighboring countries set up a nursing home in Inchon in March 1999, which now houses about 100 aged and invalid Koreans who returned from Sakhalin.
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