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Remains of Nearly 2,750 Korean WW 2 Laborers Found in Japan, South Says

Summing up a search that has been underway for more than a decade, a South Korean government commission said on Wednesday that the remains of nearly 2,750 people believed to be Koreans who were forced to work in Japan in the World War II era have been found.

Historians in South Korea estimate that at least 1.2 million Koreans were coerced, or sometimes duped, into laboring as part of Japan’s war efforts in Japan, China and elsewhere. They toiled in mines, airfields and factories for their colonial masters, and thousands died under brutal conditions. Their families in Korea were never told about the locations of their remains.

South Korea and Japan began searching for those remains after Roh Moo-hyun, then the South Korean president, asked Junichiro Koizumi, then the Japanese prime minister, for help in returning them home in 2004.

Read entire article at NYT