A permanent residential facility is being built in Ansan city in Gyeonggi province to house elderly Koreans who have returned from the Russian island of Sakhalin to live in their Korean homeland in the twilight of their lives.

The four-story building is being jointly built by Ansan city and the Korean and Japanese Red Cross, with construction set to be completed by next May.

The Korean Red Cross has been carrying out a project to facilitate the repatriation of Korean nationals in Russia who were forcibly sent to labor in the foreign country during the Japanese colonial period.

From 1992 to the present, some 1,600 of those people and their relatives have returned to their mother country.