In the days when imperial Japan was running its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, it drafted Koreans for forced labor in Japan. These Koreans and their children, more than 600,000 strong, have been there ever since. Many of them want to go home, and the Japanese, who have no love for Koreans, would like to be rid of them. South Korea’s strong-minded President Syngman Rhee, who once underwent torture at Japanese behest and has no love for them either, has all along insisted that Japan must pay him compensation for taking the Koreans in. One big reason: he already has more manpower than he can find jobs for. In contrast, Kim II Sung’s devastated and manpower hungry Communist North Korea is eager to take in all the Koreans it can find.
Last week two Soviet ships, Tobolsk and Krilyon, steamed into Japan’s Niigata harbor to pick up the first load of 975 repatriates, who had marched to the embarkation center waving red flags and singing The Song of Kim II Sung. The minds of most of their passengers had long been prepared by Soren, the Communist-financed society that controls 90% of Korean schools in Japan. The Koreans had had an undeniably miserable time in Japan. After years of work, most had less than 15,000 yen ($42) to their names. In an old U.S. Air Force barracks, they slept in heated rooms for the first time and delightedly gobbled a feast of horse mackerel and rice.
To make sure that no one was going against his will, Japanese Red Cross officials reminded all repatriates they were “free to choose to live in Japan, in South Korea or in North Korea.” But in private interviews, only one 16-year-old girl backed out. After years of feeling unwanted in a-strange land, even those not lulled by Sung’s song agreed with Bok Young Kyun, father of four, who said: “The children have no future in Japan and neither have we.”
The Japanese Red Cross predicted that some 50,000 of Japan’s 600,000 Koreans would eventually depart for Communist territory. Crowed the North Korean newspaper Minju Chosun, “A great victory for the Socialist states.”
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