610 Sakhalin Koreans to Return Home
More than 600 first-generation Korean residents of Russia's Sakhalin region will return home for the first time since being forced to move to the area during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
The government said Thursday that the first group of 15 people will arrive in Korea on Friday under a Korea-Japan joint project for the permanent return of 610 first-generation Koreans in Sakhalin Islands this year.
Seoul will provide the returnees with leased apartments in Incheon as well as welfare and medical support.
Meanwhile, Tokyo will provide them with airfare and living necessities through the Korean National Red Cross.
The homecoming project for the Sakhalin Koreans has resumed for the first time in seven years. In 1999 and 2000, around 16-hundred Koreans returned home from the region in the Russian Far East.
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