It’s the close of a cruel chapter that has ruined the lives of Yoo and about 50,000 like him–innocents caught in the geopolitical games played by Tokyo, Moscow, Pyongyang and Seoul. During World War II, the Japanese forced hundreds of thousands of Koreans like Yoo to work in Japan. Most of the laborers returned home after the war. But when the Soviets took over Sakhalin, they refused to let the Koreans leave. A few escaped by stowing away on boats. In the late 1970s Moscow seemed ready to allow their return. Pyongyang objected–and not wishing to offend its cold-war ally, the Soviet Union opted to keep the Koreans.
The suffering was relentless. With no nationality until the 1980s, Yoo endured discrimination. (He finally applied for and received Soviet citizenship in 1983, after his parents died.) His four children were denied the chance to study in good schools on the Russian mainland. Yoo, a logger, couldn’t get promoted; the authorities blacklisted him for constantly demanding repatriation. Even after the Soviet Union fell apart, their trials didn’t end. In the early 1990s Moscow and Seoul resumed diplomatic relations. The Koreans were free to leave Sakhalin. But money was a problem: of the 8,000 Koreans who survived their ordeal, only 500 had the means to move home. Finally Seoul bought a plot of land in Ansan, outside the capital, and Tokyo paid for eight apartment buildings, in which more than 1,000 returnees will live for free. “Now I am going to get my Korean citizenship,” Park Do Soo, a retired 72-year-old electric engineer, said as he landed in Seoul last week with no passport–just a piece of paper. “I will be buried here when I die.”
Even the ending is bittersweet. Yoo had to leave his four grown children back on the island. The repatriation program supports only first-generation Sakhalin settlers who are over 65. “My heart is broken,” said Yoo, “because I’m separated from my children.” The children say they will visit, secure at least that their father finally made it home.
