Word: sakhaliners
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Soviet officials describe it as a summertime wonderland of "heavenly fishing and coolness." To many of its 600,000 inhabitants, the island of Sakhalin, off the coast of Siberia, is better known for its frozen winters, when the temperature frequently drops to - 22° F. For almost 7,000 Koreans, Sakhalin is something even worse: it is a kind of prison...
Perhaps the last refugees of World War II, the Koreans have been trying for 30 years to leave Sakhalin. "If I can't get back home soon," says one of them despairingly, "I will commit suicide...
Japan controlled the southern half of Sakhalin from 1905, when it took it as a trophy of its victory in the Russo-Japanese War, until 1945. During World War II the Koreans were installed in labor camps on the island to replace Japanese men conscripted into the imperial forces. When Russia took back the island at the end of the war-even though the Soviet Union had joined the battle against Japan only a week before the surrender -the Koreans were stranded. The half a million Japanese on the island were eventually repatriated, but the Korean refugees...
About 2,000 Koreans have, in fact, got out of Sakhalin, and perhaps another 36,000 seem content to stay there. Because he was married to a Japanese woman, Park No Hak, 62, was able to leave the island in 1958, and he has made it his life's goal to bring the others out as well. "How could I forget Sakhalin?" he asks. "So many of my countrymen were languishing there, just as they are right now." Park believes since Japan forced the Koreans to go to Sakhalin in the first place, it is up to Tokyo...
...Zensho Shimasu." Park has formally petitioned the Japanese government 23 times to talk to the Soviets about the Koreans in Sakhalin. And 23 times Tokyo has responded "Zensho shimasu," or "We will act with prudence," a polite phrase the bureaucracy uses to brush off cranks and oddballs. Undaunted, Park has written endless letters to the stranded Koreans, using their replies to build an impressive dossier showing the indifference of governments...