Seoul, Nov 23 The number of Koreans aboard a Japanese ship that sank in 1945, killing up to over 3,000 people, will likely be revealed by the year-end following an analysis of passenger lists, the interior ministry said on Sunday.
The government has commissioned the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilisation by Imperial Japan to carry out an in-depth analysis of 75 passenger lists and related items received from the Japanese foreign ministry between September last year and March this year.
The analysis is expected to be completed by mid-December after the interior ministry sorts through passengers listed more than once and corrects misprints and mistranslations. Currently, a total of 18,300 people are listed in the documents, reports Yonhap news agency.
The Ukishima Maru was transporting Koreans, many of whom were forcibly mobilised for wartime labour, back to their homeland in August 1945, days after Korea's liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule, when it sank off Japan's Aomori Prefecture following an explosion in the hull.
Japan announced that the ship had hit an underwater mine, and 524 out of 3,700 passengers were killed in what it called an accident.
But the bereaved family members of the Korean victims claim more than 3,000 lost their lives, out of as many as 8,000 people aboard, and have charged that Japan intentionally blew up the ship.
Even with the upcoming analysis results, the families could refuse to accept them, given that they are largely based on data provided by the Japanese government.
"We have to wait and see the analysis results," Han Yeong-ryong, head of an association of Ukishima victims' family members, said. "We shouldn't determine (the lists) based only on what Japan gives us. We have to use this opportunity to completely determine the truth."
The foundation analysing the lists also expressed scepticism that they will reveal the exact number of passengers on the ship.
"We have to obtain additional material from Japan or carry out a full-scale survey of victims' family members to prove the numbers," a foundation official told Yonhap News Agency.
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