Hiroshima: A memorial event was held in Hiroshima on Saturday for South Korean victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the western Japan city.

Around 200 people, including bereaved family members, attended the 54th event hosted by the local branch of the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan, or Mindan, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Hiroshima was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II.

A list of 2,810 dead South Korean atomic bomb sufferers, including eight who died in the past year, was placed in a monument.

Among the attendees were Lee Key-cheol, head of South Korean government’s Overseas Koreans Agency, which was launched in June this year.

Speaking at the event, Lee vowed that South Korea will do its utmost for the development of the Korean community in Japan, asking Koreans in Japan to let go of their resentment and hate.

A 74-year-old attendee, a child of a hibakusha atomic bomb survivor, said that Lee’s words of consideration to Koreans living in Japan and to hibakusha nearly brought tears to his eyes.

In May this year, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visited the monument together on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima. Mindan’s Hiroshima branch head praised the visit as a historic achievement.

JIJI Press