BBC visits the Korean survivors in the Hiroshima bomb

At 08:15 on August 6, 1945, the nuclear bomb was falling like a stone across the sky over Hiroshima, Lee Yong Sun was on her way to primary school.

The 88 -year -old player is now looming as if she was trying to pay the memory away.

“My father was about to leave to work, but he suddenly returned and told us to sit immediately,” she recalls. “They say the streets were full of death – but I was very shocked, everything I remember is crying. I cried and cried.”

Mrs. Li says that the bodies of the victims “melted away, so their eyes were only visible,” says Ms. Lee, as the explosion equals 15,000 tons of TNT in a city with a population of 420,000 people. The rest in the aftermath of the bodies was very distorted so that they could not be determined.

“The atomic bomb … it is a terrifying weapon.”

80 years have passed since the US “young boy” bombing, the first atomic bomb for humanity, in the center of Hiroshima, killing about 70,000 people immediately. Tens of other thousands will die in the coming months of radiation, burns and dehydration.

The devastation caused by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings-which have set a decisive end for both the second global rule and the Japanese imperial referee across large areas in Asia-have been well documented over the past eight decades.

The least well -known is the fact that about 20 % of the direct victims were Korean.

Korea was a Japanese colony for 35 years when the bomb was dropped. An estimated 140,000 Koreans lived in Hiroshima at the time – and many have moved there due to mobilization of forced work, or to survive under the colonial exploitation.

Those who survived the corn bomb, along with their grandchildren, are still living in the long shadow that day-wrestling with deformation, pain and battle that lasted for decades for justice that is still without a solution.

“No one takes responsibility,” says Shim Jin Tae, 83 -year -old survivor. “It is not the country that brought down the bomb. It is not the country that failed to protect us. America has never apologized. Japan pretends to not know that. Korea is not better. It blames only – and we have left us alone.”

Mr. Shaim now lives in Habbachon, South Korea: a small boycott, after it became home to dozens of survivors like he and Mrs. Li, called “Hiroshima Korea”.

For Lady Lee, the shock of that day did not fade – she dug her body as a disease. It now lives with skin cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and angina, which is a state of weak blood flow to the heart, which usually appears as chest pain.

But what weighs greatly is that the pain did not stop with it. Her son’s injury is Chang, who supports her, with kidney failure and is subject to dialysis while waiting for a transplant.

“I think it is due to exposure to radiation, but who can prove it?” Ho Chang Lee says. “It is difficult to check scientifically – you will need a genetic test, which is stressful and costly.

The BBC has told the Ministry of Health and Welfare that it had collected genetic data between 2020 and 2024 and will continue in more studies until 2029. She said that she “is considering expanding the definition of victims” to the survivors of the second and third generation “if the results are statistically significant.”

Of the 140,000 Koreans in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, many were Hapchon.

He was surrounded by mountains with small agricultural lands, and it was a difficult place to live in. The crops were seized by the Japanese occupiers, drought destroyed the land, and thousands of people left the rural country of Japan during the war. Some were recruited by force. Others have been seduced by the promise that “you can eat three meals a day and send your children to school.”

But in Japan, the Koreans were second-class citizens-often given the most difficult, most dirt and the most dangerous jobs. Mr. Shaim says that his father was working in an ammunition factory as a forced worker, while his mother was watching nails in wooden ammunition boxes.

In the aftermath of the bomb, this distribution translated to work into a dangerous and deadly work often for Koreans in Hiroshima.

“Korean workers had to clean the dead,” said Mr. Shaim, the director of the Habsion branch at the Korean Atomic Bombs Victims Association, for the Korean BBC. “Initially they used cows, but there were many bodies. In the end, they used Datspans to collect and burn bodies in school basins.”

“Most of them were Koreans who did it. Most of the cleaning and ammunition work after the war was done by us.”

According to a study conducted by Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation, some survivors were forced to clean the rubble and restore objects. While they fled the Japanese who were evacuated to relatives, the Koreans remained without local relations in the city, being exposed to radioactive repercussions – and with limited access to medical care.

A mixture of these cases – ill -treatment, serious work and structural discrimination – all contributed to the high number of deaths in a manner that is not proportional to the Koreans.

According to the Association of Korean atomic bombs, Korean death rate was 57.1 %, compared to the total rate of about 33.7 %.

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

After the bombings, which led to the surrender of Japan and the subsequent liberation of Korea, about 23,000 Korean survivors returned home. But they did not welcome. They described as distorted or cursed, and they faced bias even in their homeland.

“The Hapchion had already had a Lieber colony,” said Mr. Shaim. “Because of that image, people believed that the grenade survivors suffer from skin diseases as well.”

He adds that such a stigma made the survivors silent about their ordeal, which indicates that “staying alive came before pride.”

Lady says that she saw this “with her eyes.”

“The people who were burned badly or extremely poor have been treated terribly,” she recalls. “In our village, some people were to their appearances and faces in great scars that their eyes were only visible. They were refused to marry and avoid.”

With the stigma of shame came poverty, and hardship. Then the diseases came without any clear cause: skin diseases, heart disease, kidney failure, and cancer. The symptoms were everywhere – but no one could explain it.

Over time, the focus has turned into the second and third generations.

Han Jeong Sun, a second -generation survivor, suffers from vascular necrosis in the hips, and cannot walk without dragging itself. Her first son was born with cerebral palsy.

“My son has never had a single step in his life,” she says. “My husband treated me terrifying me. They said:” I have a paralyzed child and you are also paralyzed-are you here to destroy our family? “

“That time was absolute hell.”

For decades, the Korean government did not face active attention to its victims, as the war was dealt with with the north and the economic struggle as higher priorities.

It was not until 2019 – more than 70 years after the bombing – Moho released the first fact -finding report. This survey was often based on questionnaires.

In response to BBC inquiries, the ministry indicated that before 2019, “there was no legal basis for official financing or investigations.”

But two separate studies and two grandparents that the victims of the second generation were more vulnerable to the disease. One, since 2005, it has shown that the victims of the second generation were more likely than the general population with depression, heart disease and anemia, while another in 2013 found that the rate of disability registration was almost twice the national average.

On this background, Mrs. Han is incredible that the authorities continue to ask for evidence to identify her and her son as victims of Hiroshima.

“My illness is the evidence,” she says. “My son’s obstruction is the guide. “But they will not get to know it. What is it supposed to do – just death without confessing?”

Only last month, on July 12, Hiroshima officials visited Hapchion for the first time to put flowers in a memorial. While former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and other special figures had occurred before, this was the first official visit by the current Japanese officials.

“Now in 2025, Japan talks about peace. But peace without apology is meaningless,” says Yanko Ishiba, a Japanese peace activist who spent most of her life calling for the Korean Hiroshima victims.

She notes that visiting officials did not mention any apology for how Japan dealt with the Korean people before and during the Second World War.

Although many former Japanese leaders have made their apologies and regret, many South Koreans consider these feelings not sincere or insufficient without official recognition.

Mrs. Ishiba notes that Japanese textbooks are still deleting the history of the colonial past of Korea – as well as atomic bombs victims – saying that “this secret deepens injustice only.”

This adds to what many view as a wider shortage of accountability than the colonial legacy of Japan.

“These issues must be addressed … while survivors are still alive. For the second and third generations, we must collect evidence and certificates before it is too late,” said Hugh Jeong-Goy, Director of the Red Cross Support Department.

For survivors like Mr. Shaim, it is not only a compensation – it is related to recognition.

“Memory is more important than compensation,” he says. “Our bodies remember what we went through … If we forget that, this will happen again. One day, no one will leave the story of the story.”