The BBC visits the Korean survivors of the Hiroshima bomb

At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, when a nuclear bomb fell like a stone through the sky above Hiroshima, Lee Jung-Soon was on the way to primary school.

The 88 -year -old man now acts her hands as if she was trying to repel the memory.

“My father was about to go for work, but he suddenly came back and told us to evacuate immediately,” she recalls. “They say that the streets were filled with the dead – but I was so shocked that I remember, it’s crying. I just cried and cried.”

The bodies of the victims “melted so that only their eyes are visible,” said Ms. Lee, like an explosion equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of TNT wrapped a city of 420,000 inhabitants. What was left after are the corpses that are too mutilated to be identified.

“The atomic bomb … it’s such a terrifying weapon.”

It has been 80 years since the United States has exploded the “ little boy ”, the very first atomic bomb of humanity, in the center of Hiroshima, instantly killing some 70,000 people. Tens of thousands of others would die in the coming months of radiation, burns and dehydration.

The devastation formulated by the attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – which brought a decisive end to the Second World War and to the Imperial Japanese domination through large expanses of Asia – has been well documented during the last eight decades.

Less well known is the fact that around 20% of immediate victims were Koreans.

Korea has been a Japanese colony for 35 years when the bomb has been abandoned. It is estimated that 140,000 Koreans lived in Hiroshima at the time – many moved there due to the mobilization of forced labor or survive under colonial exploitation.

Those who survived the atomic bomb, as well as their descendants, continue to live in the shadow of this day – fight against disfigurement, pain and a fight of several decades for justice which is not resolved.

“No one assumes responsibility,” said Shim Jin-Tae, an 83-year-old survivor. “Not the country that dropped the bomb. Not the country that has failed to protect us. America has never apologized. Japan pretends not to know. Korea is not better. They just pass the blame – and we are left alone.”

Mr. Shim now lives in Hapcheon, South Korea: a small county who, having become the house of dozens of survivors like him and Mrs. Lee, was nicknamed “Hiroshima of Korea”.

For Ms. Lee, the shock of this day has not disappeared – he engraved in his body as a disease. She now lives with skin cancer, Parkinson’s disease and angina, a condition from bad blood flow towards the heart, which generally manifests as thoracic pain.

But what weighs more heavily is that the pain did not stop with it. Her son Ho-Chang, who supports her, received a diagnosis of renal insufficiency and undergoes dialysis while waiting for a transplant.

“I think this is due to an exposure to radiation, but which can prove it?” Said Ho-Chang Lee. “It is difficult to check scientifically – you would need genetic tests, which is exhausting and expensive.

The Ministry of Health and Well-Being (MOHW) told the BBC that it had gathered genetic data between 2020 and 2024 and would continue other studies until 2029. It would “plan to expand the definition of victims” to second and third generation survivors only “if the results are statistically significant”, he said.

Of the 140,000 Koreans in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, many were hapcheon.

Surrounded by mountains with small agricultural land, it was a difficult place to live. The cultures were seized by the Japanese occupants, the droughts ravaged the earth and thousands of people left the rural country for Japan during the war. Some have been enlisted by force; Others were attracted to the promise that “you could eat three meals a day and send your children to school”.

But in Japan, Koreans were second -class citizens – often given the most difficult, dirty and dangerous jobs. Mr. Shim says that his father worked in an ammunition factory as a forced worker, while his mother hammered nails in wooden ammunition boxes.

In the aftermath of the bomb, this distribution of work resulted in dangerous and often fatal work for Koreans in Hiroshima.

“Korean workers had to clean up the dead,” SHIM, director of the Hapcheon branch of the atomic bomb, told BBC Korean. “At the beginning, they used civilians, but there were too many bodies. Finally, they used caps to bring together corpses and burned them in school lessons.”

“It was above all the Koreans who did this. Most of the cleaning and post-war ammunition works were carried out by us.”

According to a study by Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation, some survivors were forced to clean the rubble and recover the bodies. While the Japanese evacuates fled to relatives, the Koreans without local links remained in the city, exposed to radioactive fallout – and with limited access to medical care.

A combination of these conditions – ill -treatment, dangerous work and structural discrimination – all have contributed to a number of death disproportionately high in Koreans.

According to Korean atomic Bomb Victim Association, the Korean death rate was 57.1%, against the overall rate of approximately 33.7%.

About 70,000 Koreans were exposed to the bomb. At the end of the year, some 40,000 people died.

After the bombings, which led to the presentation of Japan and the subsequent release of Korea, around 23,000 Korean survivors returned home. But they were not welcomed. Developed as disfigured or cursed, they faced prejudices even in their homeland.

“Hapcheon already had a colony of leper,” said Shim. “And because of this image, people thought that bomb survivors also had skin diseases.”

Such stigma has made the survivors remain silent on their fate, he adds, suggesting that “survival came before pride”.

Ms. Lee says that she saw this “with her own eyes”.

“People who were seriously burned or extremely poor have been treated terribly,” she recalls. “In our village, some people had their backs and faces so badly marked that only their eyes were visible. They were rejected from marriage and avoided.”

With stigma came to poverty and difficulties. Then, the diseases are without clear cause: skin diseases, heart disease, kidney failure, cancer. Symptoms were everywhere – but no one could explain them.

Over time, the emphasis has moved to the second and third generations.

Han Jeong-Sun, a second generation survivor, suffers from avascular necrosis in her hips and cannot walk without hanging out. His first son was born with cerebral paralysis.

“My son has never taken a single step in his life,” she said. “And my parents-in-law treated me horribly. They said,” You gave birth to a crippled child and you are also paralyzed-are you here to ruin our family? “”

“This moment was absolute hell.”

For decades, even the Korean government was not actively interested in its own victims, because a war with the North and economic difficulties have been dealt with as higher priorities.

It was not until 2019 – over 70 years after the bombing – that Mohw published his first information report. This survey was mainly based on questionnaires.

In response to the BBC surveys, the ministry explained that before 2019, “there was no legal basis for funding or official surveys”.

But two distinct studies have discovered that second generation victims were more vulnerable to disease. One, from 2005, showed that second generation victims were much more likely than the general population to suffer from depression, heart disease and anemia, while another in 2013 noted that their rate of disability recording was almost double the national average.

In this context, Ms. Han is incredulous that the authorities continue to request proof to recognize her and her son, victims of Hiroshima.

“My illness is proof. My son’s handicap is proof. This pain transmits generations, and it is visible,” she said. “But they will not recognize him. So what are we supposed to do – die without ever being recognized?”

It was not until last month, July 12, that Hiroshima officials visited Hapcheon for the first time to put flowers during a memorial. While former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and other private characters had come before, it was the first official visit to current Japanese officials.

“Now, in 2025, Japan talks about peace. But peaceless peace has no meaning,” said Junko Ichiba, a long -standing activist in Japanese peace who spent most of her life defending the Korean victims of Hiroshima.

She points out that guest officials have made no mention or apologies about how Japan treated Koreans before and during the Second World War.

Although several former Japanese leaders have offered their apologies and their remorse, many South Koreans consider these feelings to be not very sincere or insufficient without formal recognition.

Ms. Ichiba notes that Japanese manuals are always omitted the history of the colonial past of Korea – as well as her victims of atomic bombs – saying that “this invisibility only applies injustice”.

This adds to what many consider a wider lack of responsibility for the colonial heritage of Japan.

Heo Jeong-Gu, director of the Red Cross support division, said: “These problems … must be discussed while survivors are still alive. For the second and third generations, we must collect evidence and testimonies before it is too late.”

For survivors like Mr. Shim, it is not only a question of being remunerated – it is a question of being recognized.

“Memory has more than compensation,” he says. “Our bodies remember what we have gone through … If we forget, it will happen again. And one day, there will be no one left to tell the story.”