[ti:Thousands of Korean Laborers Still Lost After WWII, Cold War End] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]Shin Yun-sun describes her life as a series of dead ends. [00:06.72]The South Korean has spent many of her 75 years questioning government officials, [00:14.00]looking through records and searching burial grounds on a distant Russian island. [00:21.48]She is searching for evidence of a father she never met. [00:27.28]Shin wants to bring back the remains of her father for her 92-year-old mother, Baek Bong-rye. [00:35.60]Japan's colonial government sent Shin's father away to do forced labor in September 1943. [00:45.84]At the time, Baek was pregnant with Shin. [00:51.24]As the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II nears, [00:56.52]the thousands of conscripted Korean men who disappeared on Russia's [01:02.64]Sakhalin Island are a largely forgotten part of Japan's severe rule of the Korean Peninsula. [01:10.76]Historians say Japan forcibly moved around 30,000 Koreans as workers [01:18.00]during the late 1930s and 1940s. [01:22.24]They were sent to what was then called Karafuto, [01:26.44]or the Japanese-occupied southern half of Sakhalin, [01:30.96]near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. [01:35.36]Most of the Korean laborers in Sakhalin came from the South. [01:40.76]When World War II ended, the Korean Peninsula [01:44.84]was divided into a Soviet Union-backed north and U.S.-backed south. [01:51.76]The 1950-53 Korean War came after, followed by the Cold War. [01:59.92]Soviet officials offered the Korean workers Soviet or North Korean citizenship beginning in the 1950s. [02:08.40]But many chose to remain stateless in hopes of someday returning to South Korea. [02:15.84]Some of the Korean workers protested for a return to South Korea in 1976. [02:23.04]Soviet officials answered by sending 40 of them and their families to North Korea. [02:31.32]South Korea and Russia established diplomatic relations in 1990 [02:36.96]and about 4,000 Koreans have returned from Sakhalin in the years since. [02:44.20]But for people like Shin, who lost contact with family members long ago, [02:49.84]there has been little progress. [02:52.72]"The Soviet Union detained him, prevented him from going home [02:57.48]and exploited his labor," Shin said about her father. [03:02.44]"(The Russian government) should at least find and send back his remains." [03:08.52]Last year, Shin and other family members sought help [03:12.44]from a United Nations group to find 25 Sakhalin Koreans. [03:18.76]The U.N. group in June asked Russia's government to search for 10 of them first, [03:24.64]said Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, a legal expert from the Seoul-based Transitional Justice Working Group. [03:32.92]He has helped with the U.N. involvement. [03:36.68]Shin said that relatives only started feeling safe talking openly about their missing fathers in the last 20 years. [03:45.76]This meant their effort got less attention than other cruel acts tied to Japan's colonial rule of Korea, [03:53.84]said Bang Il-kwon, a scholar at Seoul's Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. [04:02.04]In 2011, a South Korean government group [04:05.52]investigating colonial forced movement began working with Russia [04:10.20]to identify and return the remains of the Koreans in Sakhalin who died before the 1990s. [04:18.96]South Korean researchers spent years examining the island's poorly kept burial areas, [04:25.52]where stone or wooden markers were often missing, damaged or not clearly marked. [04:32.92]In 2015, South Korean researchers reported that at least 5,000 graves belonged to Korean forced laborers. [04:42.84]But the efforts soon lost strength. [04:46.00]South Korea's conservative government at the time refused to extend the group's mandate after 2015. [04:55.28]There has been little talk about restarting the activities under liberal President Moon Jae-in. [05:02.96]His government has clashed with Japan over other wartime issues [05:07.64]but also wants engagement with North Korea. [05:11.80]South Korea has said it hopes to reach a new agreement with Russia [05:16.12]that would expand efforts to find and return the remains. [05:21.40]However, Lee Sang-won, an official from South Korea's Ministry of the Interior and Safety, [05:28.80]admits nothing has been agreed to yet. [05:32.00]Shin is critical of the slow progress. [05:36.28]She said, "Who knows how long it will be before my mother is gone, too?" [05:43.00]I'm Ashley Thompson. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM