Exiled Koreans return after 60 years

[Flashermac]

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia - Pak Den Dya has lived as an outsider in this hardscrabble land in the frigid North Pacific â?? never taking Soviet or Russian citizenship in the 68 years since the Japanese empire uprooted her from her native Korea.

 

"I didn't want to get citizenship because I wanted to go back to Korea," said Pak, leafing through faded family photos of picnics and weddings on Sakhalin Island, where she was brought with her parents from then Japanese-occupied Korea when she was just a year old.

 

"Now, I will go there to die."

 

Pak, 69, is in the last group of Koreans heading home under a program that aims to write the final chapter in an often-overlooked tragedy that befell tens of thousands of Koreans. But the ending is bittersweet at best.

 

Only Koreans born before World War II ended in August 1945 are eligible for relocation and financial support under the three-year repatriation program funded by South Korea and Japan. As a result, families are being torn apart again, much as they were by their forced move decades ago.

 

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