The BBC visits the Korean survivors of the Hiroshima bomb
"No-one takes responsibility," says Shim Jin-tae, an 83-year-old survivor. "Not the country that dropped the bomb. Not the country that failed to protect us. America never apologised. Japan pretends not to know. Korea is no better. They just pass the blame - and we're left alone."Mr Shim now lives in Hapcheon, South Korea: a small county which, having become the home of dozens of survivors like he and Ms Lee, has been dubbed "Korea's Hiroshima".For Ms Lee, the shock of that day has not faded - it etched itself into her body as illness. She now lives with skin cancer, Parkinson's disease, and angina, a condition stemming from poor blood flow to the heart, which typically manifests as chest pain.But what weighs more heavily is that the pain didn't stop with her. Her son Ho-chang, who supports her, was diagnosed with kidney failure and is undergoing dialysis while awaiting a transplant."I believe it's due to radiation exposure, but who can prove it?" Ho-chang Lee says. "It's hard to verify scientifically - you'd need genetic testing, which is exhausting and expensive.The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) told the BBC that it had gathered genetic data between 2020 and 2024 and would continue further studies until 2029. It would "consider expanding the definition of victims" to second- and- third-generation survivors only "if the results are statistically significant", it said.
The Korean toll
Of the 140,000 Koreans in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, many were from Hapcheon.Surrounded by mountains with little farmland, it was a difficult place to live. Crops were seized by the Japanese occupiers, droughts ravaged the land, and thousands of people left the rural country for Japan during the war. Some were forcibly conscripted; others were lured by the promise that "you could eat three meals a day and send your kids to school."But in Japan, Koreans were second-class citizens – often given the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Mr Shim says his father worked in a munitions factory as a forced labourer, while his mother hammered nails into wooden ammunition crates.In the aftermath of the bomb, this distribution of labour translated into dangerous and often fatal work for Koreans in Hiroshima.
"Korean workers had to clean up the dead," Mr Shim, who is the director of the Hapcheon branch of the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association, tells BBC Korean. "At first they used stretchers, but there were too many bodies. Eventually, they used dustpans to gather corpses and burned them in schoolyards.""It was mostly Koreans who did this. Most of the post-war clean-up and munitions work was done by us."According to a study by the Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation, some survivors were forced to clear rubble and recover bodies. While Japanese evacuees fled to relatives, Koreans without local ties remained in the city, exposed to the radioactive fallout – and with limited access to medical care.A combination of these conditions - poor treatment, hazardous work and structural discrimination - all contributed to a disproportionately high death toll among Koreans.According to the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association, the Korean fatality rate was 57.1%, compared to the overall rate of about 33.7%.About 70,000 Koreans were exposed to the bomb. By year's end, some 40,000 had died.
Outcasts at home
After the bombings, which led to Japan's surrender and Korea's subsequent liberation, about 23,000 Korean survivors returned home. But they were not welcomed. Branded as disfigured or cursed, they faced prejudice even in their homeland."Hapcheon already had a leper colony," Mr Shim explains. "And because of that image, people thought the bomb survivors had skin diseases too."Such stigma made survivors stay silent about their plight, he adds, suggesting that "survival came before pride".Ms Lee says she saw this "with her own eyes"."People who were badly burned or extremely poor were treated terribly," she recalls. "In our village, some people had their backs and faces so badly scarred that only their eyes were visible. They were rejected from marriage and shunned."With stigma came poverty, and hardship. Then came illnesses with no clear cause: skin diseases, heart conditions, kidney failure, cancer. The symptoms were everywhere - but no-one could explain them.Over time, the focus shifted to the second and third generations.
Han Jeong-sun, a second-generation survivor, suffers from avascular necrosis in her hips, and can't walk without dragging herself. Her first son was born with cerebral palsy."My son has never walked a single step in his life," she says. "And my in-laws treated me horribly. They said, 'You gave birth to a crippled child and you're crippled too—are you here to ruin our family?'"That time was absolute hell."For decades, not even the Korean government took active interest in its own victims, as a war with the North and economic struggles were treated as higher priorities.It wasn't until 2019 - more than 70 years after the bombing - that MOHW released its first fact-finding report. That survey was mostly based on questionnaires.In response to BBC inquiries, the ministry explained that prior to 2019, "There was no legal basis for funding or official investigations".But two separate studies had found that second-generation victims were more vulnerable to illness. One, from 2005, showed that second-generation victims were far more likely than the general population to suffer depression, heart disease and anaemia, while another from 2013 found their disability registration rate was nearly double the national average.Against this backdrop, Ms Han is incredulous that authorities keep asking for proof to recognise her and her son as victims of Hiroshima."My illness is the proof. My son's disability is the proof. This pain passes down generations, and it's visible," she says. "But they won't recognise it. So what are we supposed to do - just die without ever being acknowledged?"
Peace without apology
It was only last month, on July 12, that Hiroshima officials visited Hapcheon for the first time to lay flowers at a memorial. While former PM Hatoyama Yukio and other private figures had come before, this was the first official visit by current Japanese officials."Now in 2025 Japan talks about peace. But peace without apology is meaningless," says Junko Ichiba, a long-time Japanese peace activist who has spent most of her life advocating for Korean Hiroshima victims.She points out, the visiting officials gave no mention or apology for how Japan treated Korean people before and during World War Two.
Although multiple former Japanese leaders have offered their apologies and remorse, many South Koreans regard these sentiments as insincere or insufficient without formal acknowledgement.Ms Ichiba notes that Japanese textbooks still omit the history of Korea's colonial past - as well as its atomic bomb victims – saying that "this invisibility only deepens the injustice".This adds to what many view as a broader lack of accountability for Japan's colonial legacy.Heo Jeong-gu, director of the Red Cross's support division, said, "These issues... must be addressed while survivors are still alive. For the second and third generations, we must gather evidence and testimonies before it's too late."For survivors like Mr Shim it's not just about being compensated – it's about being acknowledged."Memory matters more than compensation," he says. "Our bodies remember what we went through… If we forget, it'll happen again. And someday, there'll be no one left to tell the story."
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