South Korea's Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung has announced plans to award a Japanese civic group for its role in recovering the remains of Korean forced laborers killed in a 1942 coal mine disaster in Japan. If realized, this would be the first state decoration given by the South Korean government to a Japanese civic organization since liberation from colonial rule in 1945. A recent bilateral agreement on DNA analysis raises hopes for returning the remains to victims' families.
In 1942, a devastating flood at the Chosei coal mine in Japan's Yamaguchi Prefecture killed 183 workers, including 136 Koreans forcibly mobilized as laborers. The disaster had long been forgotten until the Association to Etch the Calamity of the Under Sea Coal Mine Disaster into History, formed in 1991, began investigating and seeking to recover the victims' remains.
Funded by crowdfunding, the group conducted underwater searches and discovered four human bone fragments, including a skull, in August last year. South Korean divers Kim Kyung-soo and Kim Soo-eun participated in the recovery. Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung told Yonhap News Agency, "The Japanese government had previously not acknowledged that there were victims at the Chosei coal mine site. That's why it was South Korean divers who worked with the Japanese civic group that found the remains. There will be a government award for the Japanese civic group and our divers who participated in the remains recovery."
Last week, during a summit between President Lee Jae-myung and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, the two countries agreed to conduct DNA analysis on the remains to identify them and potentially return them to families. The interior ministry has already decided on a minister's commendation for the group and divers, to be presented in Japan next month. This would mark the first such honor to a Japanese civic organization since Korea's 1945 liberation. Yun also expressed willingness to pursue state awards for others, including a Japanese journalist who uncovered a passenger list from a 1945 ship sinking that killed hundreds of repatriating Koreans.
