President Yoon Sung-yeol of the Republic of Korea, who is visiting Hiroshima, will visit the Korean Cenotaph for the Victims of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima City with Prime Minister Kishida on June 21. This is the first visit by a South Korean president, and the South Korean government says it is a sign of President Yoon's intention to deepen relations between the two countries in a future-oriented manner while looking at the past.
President Yoon Sung-nyeol will visit the Korean Cenotaph for the Victims of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima Peace Park with Prime Minister Kishida in the morning of November 21.
The cenotaph was built on the other side of the Peace Park in 1970 and moved to its current location in 1999, making this the first visit by a South Korean president.
When President Yoon met with Korean A-bomb survivors living in Japan on the 19th, he apologized for the fact that the visit to the cenotaph was too late and that the government had not provided sufficient support for the A-bomb survivors so far.
A South Korean government official said that the visit was an expression of President Yoon's intention to deepen relations between the two countries in a future-oriented manner while looking at the past.
The visit to the cenotaph is also followed by a Japan-ROK summit meeting, and the two leaders are expected to announce their stance of further advancing moves to improve relations.
What are Korean Atomic Bomb Victims?
It is said that tens of thousands of people from the Korean Peninsula were killed when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but the exact number is still unknown.
After the war, many A-bomb survivors returned to South and North Korea, and according to the Korean Red Cross Society, about 1800,6 people in South Korea who have been issued the A-bomb Survivors' Health Handbook are currently living mainly in Hapcheon in the south.
In South Korea, it has been pointed out for many years that the government's support for A-bomb survivors is insufficient, but it was not until six years ago, in 2017, that the law on assistance came into effect.
In addition, many A-bomb survivors have refrained from sharing their experiences publicly for fear of discrimination, so there are few opportunities for them to be widely covered in the media, and the reality of A-bomb survivors has not been well known in Korea.
Shim Jin-tae of the Korea Association for Atomic Bomb Victims said, "It has been 78 years since the atomic bombing, but there is not a single cenotaph in Korea," and called for further support from the South Korean government.