[Pangs of history] Files show forced labor during Japan’s annexation

Koreans work at the Kawanami shipyard in Nagasaki, Japan.

Young students at Suncheon Nam Elementary School who were tricked by their headmaster and teachers into forced labor in 1944. One of the students in the photo worked at an aircraft plant in Nagoya, Japan.

The Korean government on Monday unveiled tens of thousands of documents that detail Japan’s mobilization of Koreans into forced labor during its colonial rule from 1910-1945.

The nearly 400,000 documents revealed by the Commission on Verification and Support for the Victims of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Colonialism included books, photos and written testimonies.

Since 2005, the special committee, headed by Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik, has been investigating by interviewing forced labor victims and their families to collect the data.

According to the commission, Japan forced some 220,000 Koreans to work in Korea, Japan, northeast China, and Russia.

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcorp.com)

Korean conscripts are trained at a school in South Chungcheong Province before being deployed to Manchuriain 1944.

Korean workers who were forced into labor in Hokkaido, Japan (Prime Minister’s Office)