Remains of 115 Korean wartime forced laborers buried at home

More than 100 Korean laborers were buried at home Sunday, over seven decades after they were taken to Japan for forced labor during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.

The 115 sets of remains brought back from Hokkaido, Japan, Friday, by group of bereaved families and members of a civic group named Steppingstone for Peace were laid to rest at a public cemetery in Paju, Gyeonggi Province.

The people were initially mobilized to build a Japanese military airfield and a dam in Hokkaido. 

The remains were gathered by experts, religious people and students from South Korea and Japan in all parts of Hokkaido since 1997. It is the first time that more than a hundred sets of remains were delivered at once.

The forced mobilization was carried out when the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910-45. Many Koreans were conscripted into the Japanese military or drafted to work in the military industrial sector, being deployed to Japan and other countries against their will.

Many of them returned home after the 1945 liberation of Korea, following Japan's defeat in World War II, but others remained abroad. Many are believed to have died during the war.

It is unclear how many people were mobilized for forced labor and died. Some civic groups claim the number of conscripts goes up into the millions.

A funeral ceremony was held at Seoul Plaza in front of Seoul City Hall on Saturday, with thousands of bereaved families and civic group members participating. (Yonhap)

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