Atomic bomb survivors in South Korea
"My injuries consisted almost entirely of burns, on my head, face, neck, wrists, fingers and even the lobes of my ears. The skin was peeling off my wrists, my back, they told me, was like a piece of raw beef, with the ribs all but poking through." Ibuse, Masuji; Black rain; Japan 1969.
Hapcheon county in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, is also called "The Korean Hiroshima".
During World War II, when the Japanese occupied Korea, thousands of residents of this small farming community were shipped to Japan to work in munitions factories. Others were landless farmers looking for employment in Japanese cities.
On August 6, 1945, "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed on August 9 by the detonation of "Fat Man" over Nagasaki. The bombs killed as many as 140'000 people in Hiroshima and 80'000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945.
Among the dead were 40'000 Koreans, 30'000 Koreans were injured.
When the Korean survivors returned home, they did not dare to talk about their terrible experiences out of fear of prejudice. They faced poverty and loneliness. Ninety percent of those who returned to South Korea died because there was no medical treatment and no support for them.
Only recently the survivors have been granted medical and financial support by the South Korean and the Japanese government.
Tens of thousands of nuclear warheads still exist. Encouraging steps in arms reduction in the 80s and 90s have come to a deadlock. Mini nukes are being developed, blueprints of bombs are changing hands in plastic bags and Mohammed al-Baradei, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), believes that the danger of a nuclear conflict has never been as great as today.
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