The Korean National Red Cross (KNRC) said Tuesday eighty-five senior citizens whose lives were twice uprooted, once by Japanese masters and once by themselves, will return to Sakhalin Island Thursday.

A KNRC official said the 85 elderly people will stay there for four weeks to meet their loved ones.

The official said the departure, the first of its kind, will be made as part of the KNRC's campaign to help some 1,100 returnees on 15 occasions between June and August visit relatives still on Sakhalin.

The KNRC first pushed for the return of ethnic Koreans on the Russian island in 1994, and some 1,300 people left family and friends to spend the remainder of their lives in the country of their birth.