點擊上方「練英語聽力」↑↑↑關注我
（↑點擊上面在線試聽今天的音頻，音頻播放器已經支持暫停、快進、後退功能了）
聽力參考原文 ↓↓↓
[00:00.04]Shin Yun-sun describes her life as a series of dead ends.
[00:06.72]The South Korean has spent many of her 75 years questioning government officials,
[00:14.00]looking through records and searching burial grounds on a distant Russian island.
[00:21.48]She is searching for evidence of a father she never met.
[00:27.28]Shin wants to bring back the remains of her father for her 92-year-old mother, Baek Bong-rye.
[00:35.60]Japan's colonial government sent Shin's father away to do forced labor in September 1943.
[00:45.84]At the time, Baek was pregnant with Shin.
[00:51.24]As the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II nears,
[00:56.52]the thousands of conscripted Korean men who disappeared on Russia's
[01:02.64]Sakhalin Island are a largely forgotten part of Japan's severe rule of the Korean Peninsula.
[01:10.76]Historians say Japan forcibly moved around 30,000 Koreans as workers
[01:18.00]during the late 1930s and 1940s.
[01:22.24]They were sent to what was then called Karafuto,
[01:26.44]or the Japanese-occupied southern half of Sakhalin,
[01:30.96]near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
[01:35.36]Most of the Korean laborers in Sakhalin came from the South.
[01:40.76]When World War II ended, the Korean Peninsula
[01:44.84]was divided into a Soviet Union-backed north and U.S.-backed south.
[01:51.76]The 1950-53 Korean War came after, followed by the Cold War.
[01:59.92]Soviet officials offered the Korean workers Soviet or North Korean citizenship beginning in the 1950s.
[02:08.40]But many chose to remain stateless in hopes of someday returning to South Korea.
[02:15.84]Some of the Korean workers protested for a return to South Korea in 1976.
[02:23.04]Soviet officials answered by sending 40 of them and their families to North Korea.
[02:31.32]South Korea and Russia established diplomatic relations in 1990
[02:36.96]and about 4,000 Koreans have returned from Sakhalin in the years since.
[02:44.20]But for people like Shin, who lost contact with family members long ago,
[02:49.84]there has been little progress.
[02:52.72]"The Soviet Union detained him, prevented him from going home
[02:57.48]and exploited his labor," Shin said about her father.
[03:02.44]"(The Russian government) should at least find and send back his remains."
[03:08.52]Last year, Shin and other family members sought help
[03:12.44]from a United Nations group to find 25 Sakhalin Koreans.
[03:18.76]The U.N. group in June asked Russia's government to search for 10 of them first,
[03:24.64]said Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, a legal expert from the Seoul-based Transitional Justice Working Group.
[03:32.92]He has helped with the U.N. involvement.
[03:36.68]Shin said that relatives only started feeling safe talking openly about their missing fathers in the last 20 years.
[03:45.76]This meant their effort got less attention than other cruel acts tied to Japan's colonial rule of Korea,
[03:53.84]said Bang Il-kwon, a scholar at Seoul's Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
[04:02.04]In 2011, a South Korean government group
[04:05.52]investigating colonial forced movement began working with Russia
[04:10.20]to identify and return the remains of the Koreans in Sakhalin who died before the 1990s.
[04:18.96]South Korean researchers spent years examining the island's poorly kept burial areas,
[04:25.52]where stone or wooden markers were often missing, damaged or not clearly marked.
[04:32.92]In 2015, South Korean researchers reported that at least 5,000 graves belonged to Korean forced laborers.
[04:42.84]But the efforts soon lost strength.
[04:46.00]South Korea's conservative government at the time refused to extend the group's mandate after 2015.
[04:55.28]There has been little talk about restarting the activities under liberal President Moon Jae-in.
[05:02.96]His government has clashed with Japan over other wartime issues
[05:07.64]but also wants engagement with North Korea.
[05:11.80]South Korea has said it hopes to reach a new agreement with Russia
[05:16.12]that would expand efforts to find and return the remains.
[05:21.40]However, Lee Sang-won, an official from South Korea's Ministry of the Interior and Safety,
[05:28.80]admits nothing has been agreed to yet.
[05:32.00]Shin is critical of the slow progress.
[05:36.28]She said, "Who knows how long it will be before my mother is gone, too?"
[05:43.00]I'm Ashley Thompson.
______________________________
Words in This Storydead end - adj. a situation, plan, or way of doing something that leads to nothing further
conscript - v. to force (someone) to serve in the armed forces
exploit - v. to use (someone or something) in a way that helps you unfairly
scholar - n. a person who has studied a subject for a long time and knows a lot about it
grave - n. a hole in the ground for burying a dead body
mandate - n. an official order to do something
engagement - n. the act or state of being involved with something