BBC visits the Korea survivors of the bomb in Hiroshima

At 08:15 on August 6, 1945, when a nuclear bomb fell like a stone through the sky over Hiroshima, Lee Jung-Son was on the way to a primary school.

Now-88-year-old waving his hands, as if trying to repel memory.

“My father was about to go to work, but he suddenly went back and told us to evacuate immediately,” she recalls. “They say the streets were filled with the dead – but I was so shocked to remember crying. I just cried and cried.”

The bodies of the victims “melted so that their eyes alone were visible,” says G -Ja Lee, like an explosion equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of TNT, wrapped a city of 420,000 people. What remained after that was the corpses to be identified.

“The atomic bomb … it’s such a terrifying weapon.”

It has been 80 years since the United States blown up the “little boy”, the first of their kind atomic bomb of humanity, over the center of Hiroshima, immediately killing about 70,000 people. Tens of thousands would die more in the coming months of radiation disease, burns and dehydration.

The devastation carried out by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which led to a decisive end of both World War II and Japanese imperial rule in large parts of Asia, well documented in the last eight decades.

Less known is the fact that about 20% of the immediate victims were Koreans.

Korea has been a Japanese colony for 35 years when the bomb was dropped. Approximately 140,000 Koreans lived in Hiroshima at that time – many who moved there due to forced mobilization of labor or to survive in colonial operation.

Those who have survived the atomic bomb, along with their descendants, continue to live in the long shade of this day-fight with disfiguration, pain and decades of battle for justice, which remains unresolved.

“Nobody takes responsibility,” says Shim Jin-so, an 83-year-old survivor. “Not the country that dropped the bomb. Not the country that failed to protect us.

Now, PiM lives in Paptchon, South Korea: a small county, which, having become the home of dozens of survivors like him, and Da Lee, is called “Korea Hiroshima”.

For d -lee, the shock of that day has not faded – he has embedded in her body as a disease. She now lives with skin cancer, Parkinson’s and angina disease, a condition resulting from poor blood flow to the heart, which usually manifests as chest pain.

But what weighs heavier is that the pain did not stop with her. Her son Ho-Chang, who supports her, was diagnosed with kidney failure and was subjected to dialysis while waiting for a transplant.

“I believe this is due to radiation exposure, but who can prove it?” Ho-Chang Lee says. “It is difficult to check scientifically – you will need genetic testing, which is exhausting and expensive.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) told the BBC that it has collected genetic data between 2020 and 2024 and will continue further studies by 2029, it will “consider the expansion of victims’ definition only of the second and third generation survivors” if the results are statistically significant, “she says.

Of the 140,000 Koreans in Hiroshima during the attack, many of them are from Paptchon.

Surrounded by mountains with small agricultural lands, it was a difficult place to live. The harvest was seized by the Japanese occupiers, dried the land, and thousands of people left the village for Japan during the war. Some were forcibly prepared; Others were lured by the promise that “you can eat three meals a day and send your children to school.”

But in Japan, Koreans were second-class citizens-often they give the most difficult, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. D -N -Shim says his father worked at a ammunition factory as a forced worker while his mother stabbed his nails into wooden ammunition.

After the bomb, this distribution of labor has become a dangerous and often fatal work for Koreans in Hiroshima.

“Korean workers had to clean the dead,” says G -N -Shim, who is the director of the Pills Branch of the Korean Atomic Victims Association, BBC Korean tells. “At first they used stretchers, but there were too many bodies. In the end, they used powders to collect corpses and burned them in the school yards.”

“Most of all, the Koreans did this. Most of the post-war cleaning and the ammunition was done by us.”

According to a study by a Gyeongi welfare foundation, some survivors were forced to clear the ruins and restore the bodies. While Japanese evacuated fled relatives, Koreans without local connections remained in the city, exposed to the radioactive fall – and with limited access to medical care.

A combination of these conditions – poor treatment, dangerous work and structural discrimination – all contributed to the disproportionately high death of death among Koreans.

According to the Association of Victims of Korean atomic bombs, the Korean mortality rate is 57.1%, compared to the total percentage of about 33.7%.

About 70,000 Koreans were exposed to the bomb. By the end of the year, about 40,000 were killed.

After the attacks, which led to the transmission of Japan and the subsequent release of Korea, about 23,000 survivors from Korea returned home. But they were not welcomed. Marked as disfigured or damn, they were confronted with prejudices even in their homeland.

“The Pipe has already had a leprosy colony,” explains G -N PWM. “And because of this image, people believed that bomb survivors also had skin diseases.”

Such a stigma made the survivors remain silent on their difficult situation, he adds, suggesting that “the survival came before pride.”

G -ja Lee says she saw this “with her own eyes.”

“People who were heavily burned or extremely poor were treated terribly,” she recalls. “In our village, some people had their backs, and their faces were so badly marked that their eyes were visible. They were rejected by marriage and diverted.”

With the stigma came poverty and difficulties. Then came diseases for no clear reason: 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 Yong-Sun, who survived the second generation, suffers from avascular necrosis in his hips and cannot walk without dragging himself. Her first son was born with cerebral palsy.

“My son has never walked a single step in his life,” she says. “And my mother-in-law treated me terribly. They said,” You gave birth to a crippled child and you are also crippled-are you here to ruin our family? “

“That time was absolute hell.”

For decades, even the Korean government has not been actively interested in its own victims, since war with northern and economic struggles have not been treated as higher priorities.

It was not until 2019 – more than 70 years after the bombing – Mohw released its first fact report. This study was mostly based on questionnaires.

In response to the BBC investigations, the ministry explained that before 2019, “there is no legal basis for funding or official investigations.”

But two separate studies have found that second-generation victims are more vulnerable to disease. One since 2005 has shown that second-generation casualties are much more likely than the general population to have depression, heart disease and anemia, while the other since 2013 found that the percentage of disability registration was almost twice as high as the national average.

Against this background, Han Khan is distrustful that authorities continue to seek proof to recognize her and her son as victims of Hiroshima.

“My illness is proof. My son’s damage is proof. This pain goes through generations and is visible,” she says. “But they won’t recognize it. So what should we do – just die without being recognized at all?”

Just last month, on July 12, Hiroshima officials visited Hapcheon for the first time to lay flowers on a memorial. While former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and other private figures had come before, it was the first official visit of current Japanese officials.

“Now in 2025, Japan talks about peace. But peace is not a senseless without excuse,” says Junko Ichiba, a longtime Japanese peace activist who spent most of his life, advocating the victims of Korea Hiroshima.

She points out that visiting officials did not mention or an excuse how Japan treated Korean people before and during World War II.

Although many former Japanese leaders have offered their apologies and remorse, many South Koreans consider these feelings insincere or insufficient without official recognition.

Da -Ichiba notes that Japanese textbooks still miss the history of the colonial past in Korea – as well as the victims of atomic bombs – saying that “this invisibility only deepens injustice.”

This adds to what many consider as a broader lack of accountability of Japan’s colonial heritage.

Heo Yong-Gu, director of the Red Cross Support Unit, said: “These questions … must be addressed while the survivors are still alive. For the second and third generations, we must gather evidence and testimonies before it is too late.”

The survivors like PWM are not just a compensation – but a recognition.

“Memory matters more than compensation,” he says. “Our bodies remember what we went through … If we forget, it will happen again. And one day there will be no one to tell the story.”