‘300 ethnic Koreans’ whereabouts unknown’

TOKYO ―The number of ethnic Koreans whose whereabouts are unknown after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan a week ago amounts to nearly 300, according to a group of Korean residents in Tokyo.

“Mindan,” or the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan, said Friday that the total number of ethnic Koreans out of reach was 297, as of 2 p.m. on Thursday.

The union said that it was making all-out efforts to find those currently out of contact in cooperation with its local chapters in different provinces.

A total of 192 people have been reported out of reach in Miyagi prefecture, the area worst hit by the 9.0- magnitude quake and tsunami. This makes up about 70 percent of the total number of Korean residents living in the province before the quake, which was 262 people.

Mindan senior official Kang Woo-suk said that they could not define those out of reach for now as missing, and raised hopes that there was a possibility they might have moved to shelters or safer areas.

Fukushima prefecture, currently gripped by a nuclear crisis, reported 63 Koreans out of contact. Before the quake, 235 people had been resident there. A total of 34 people in Iwate prefecture cannot be confirmed alive. Some 102 people had been resident there before the quake.

About 20 people have been out of reach in Ibaraki prefecture, in which 22 people had been resident.

“It is hard to confirm identities of Korean Japanese people as many of them have Japanese names,” said Kang. “Staff members of the Union have been dispatched to those regions to identify them who cannot be reached for now,” he added.

The Korean Residents Union in Japan was established in 1946 to protect and support the rights of Koreans resident in Japan. It operates 49 regional offices and 317 sub-regional offices, boasting the biggest network in Korean Japanese society.

In the meantime, Japan’s police agency said on Friday that the official number of dead and missing has topped 16,600, with 6,405 confirmed dead.

The death toll has increased steadily amid reports that it could eventually be much higher.

By Kim Sang-soo, Korea Herald correspondent 
(dlcw@heraldcorp.com)