[Speech]Jin-tae Shim: The first generation of Korean A-bomb victim

The first generation of Korean A-bomb victim: 

Jin-tae Shim 

(Head of Hapcheon Branch, Korea Atomic Bombs Victim Association)

Remarks at the 10th NPT Review conference



During the Japanese colonial period, the people of Hapcheon, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea were extremely poor and had nothing to eat for themselves. The Japanese plundered every single grain of rice and barley and even took our metal bowls and spoons.


Those in Hapcheon (Korean), who hadn’t already conscripted to work at Hiroshima, were lured into going to Japan, hearing ‘if you go to Japan, you can eat at least a bowl of rice every meal’. The people of Hapcheon (Korean) were forcibly mobilized to go to Hiroshima and suffered multiple forms of exploitation in their travels from Busan to Shimonoseki to arrive in Hiroshima.


My father was also doing forced labor at the Hiroshima military base. My mother worked to make containers for ammunition in a munitions factory in Hiroshima. I was born in 1943 at #251, Ebamachi, Hiroshima and was exposed to the A-bomb there.


I became a chair of the Hapcheon Branch of the Korea Atomic Bomb Victims Association in 2001. From then and until now, I have wondered about why the A-bomb victims are invisible in Korea, why the United States used the atomic bomb in the first place, and why there are victims but no faces to the perpetrators.


In conclusion, I believe that the atomic bomb victims were innocents who were harshly sacrificed for a political game, and that the entire accountability lies with the United States.


The US already knew through nuclear tests that the use of nuclear weapons would cause enormous damage. Why did it decide to drop the atomic bombs on defenseless civilians in Nagasaki at 8:15 am in time for sunrise and at 11:15 am in the middle of the day? As a victim of the atomic bomb, I have my own doubts.


Even 77 years after the atomic bombing, the United States does not acknowledge its culpability and accountability. There has never been any mention of apology or reparations to the victims! As an A-bomb victim myself, I am frustrated by the incomplete implementation of the UN resolution and the NPT decisions on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament.


World peace cannot be achieved without the abolition of nuclear weapons. Even now, people around the world remain terrified by the tension of not knowing when nuclear weapons may be used. I would like to emphasize the urgent need to create a victim compensation law for nuclear-weapon states and to turn existing nuclear weapons into scrap metal. World peace cannot be achieved without the abolition of nuclear weapons. Even now, people around the world remain terrified by the tension of not knowing when nuclear.


In Hiroshima Peace Park, there are no records on why the atomic bombs were dropped and used. So, I would like to create a genuine peace and anti-nuclear park in Hapcheon which clearly indicates the culpability and accountability of the US for dropping the atomic bomb, in order to inform people around the world why the use of nuclear weapons should be banned.


Japan committed war crimes and placed Asia and the whole world in fear of war. More important than any reparation is an official apology to the Korean A-bomb survivors of its war crimes. As a part of fulfilling its accountability, I demand that Japan contribute to creating a memorial house in Hapcheon, a commemorative facility so that the 50,000 Korean bomb victims who were forcibly taken to Japan and then unjustly killed instantly in Hiroshima and Nakasaki can rest comfortably, even spiritually, in their homeland.


Part-1: Jin-tae Shim 


Part-2: Jin-tae Shim