Culture & Lifestyle

Kwak Kwi-Hoon is pictured at a school museum for the elementary school that he graduated from in South Korea. Kwak continued teaching after the Korean War and served as principal of a senior high school. Having been named in March honorary chairman of the 2,633-member Society of South Korean Atom Bomb Victims, an organization he once chaired, he leads ongoing negotiations with Japan.

In the rugged mountains of southwestern South Korea, some 40 km from Chonju, is Kwak Kwi-Hoon's former elementary school. In February it celebrated its 100th anniversary, recasting the classrooms as a school museum. In late March I accompanied the 83-year-old Kwak to the school museum, where its most distinguished graduates are honored, of whom he is one.

In late 2002, in a Japanese court, Kwak won official recognition as an overseas hibakusha, thus becoming eligible for government-funded medical compensation. In spring 2004 the South Korean government awarded Kwak a medal in honor of his achievement. On display at the school, along with various prizes Kwak won as a student, is the record of the Japanese court proceedings.

"I feel embarrassed," said Kwak modestly. He added, however, "I did what I did because I felt I had a mission, imposed on me by history, to fight to put an end to discrimination."

Shortly before he was to graduate from teachers' college, Kwak was drafted and assigned to a military unit in Hiroshima. He was there when the city was bombed. Returning to Korea in December 1945, he took his first job as a teacher, determined to play his part in rebuilding his country.

Growing up under the Japanese colonial regime, however, he had received a Japan-oriented education.

"I taught by studying Korean language and history with my students," he recalls.

As a hibakusha, he found himself in a difficult position. Many Koreans saw the atom bombing in positive terms, as a blow struck for Korea's liberation. His first task in a lifelong campaign on behalf of Korean hibakusha was therefore one of education.

In Kwak's apartment in a 15-storey high-rise near Seoul, he shows me his medal in its box of paulownia wood. "This is a family treasure," he says. His victory in a Japanese court encourages all overseas hibakusha, and he is justly proud of the tribute paid to him for it by his own country.

On April 24 Kwak was in Japan, lending his support to another hibakusha in a lawsuit being heard in Osaka District Court. A hibakusha cannot claim compensation without government-issued documents -- and these documents are still not obtainable outside Japan.

"The Japanese government has heartlessly used trickery to block the path to [hibakusha] compensation," Kwak told a gathering following a court session. "And the South Korean government has turned a blind eye, giving us no one to depend upon."

And so, defying old age, Kwak struggles on.