On the September 10 broadcast of the SBS program "Tails of Tales" (hereinafter "Tails of Tales"), the broadcast shed light on the tragic day at the Chosei Coal Mine under the subtitle "Black Bones - An Obituary Delivered After 40 Years."
In 1991, people across the country began receiving letters sent from Japan. The recipients all shared one commonality: they learned that a family member had died in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, on February 3, 1942.
The bereaved families knew virtually nothing about what happened that day. However, there were people who vividly remembered that fateful day.
Seol Do-sul was twenty-one years old in 1939 when he was suddenly dragged off to Japan. There were hundreds of young men in the exact same predicament. Filled with anxiety, the place they arrived at was the Chosei Coal Mine located in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Under strict surveillance, they began working at the Chosei Coal Mine, a submarine coal mine stretching out beneath the sea. In such harsh conditions where the engine sounds of passing ships overhead could be heard clearly, countless young men had to work without even being able to properly straighten their backs.
Naturally, the young men constantly looked for a way to escape this place, but that was virtually impossible. They faced daily abuse from the Japanese overseers and gave up on escaping to avoid being beaten to death. Ultimately, about a thousand Joseon youths were forcibly brought there.
On that fateful day in 1942, Seol Do-sul was sleeping after finishing his shift. Awakened by an urgent shout from the supervisor, he rushed outside and directly witnessed the coal mine being submerged.
The area in front of the mine shaft was packed with people. Countless individuals were wailing in front of the mine entrance, which had been blocked off by seawater. They were searching for their family members who had gone inside to work.
Even as time passed, no one was anywhere to be found to explain what was happening inside the shaft or what would be done next. A short while later, Japanese military police appeared and sealed off the mine entrance right in front of the families who were desperately searching for those who had gone inside.
No one knew how many people died or how the accident happened. The bereaved families could not even find the bodies of their loved ones, and the remaining family members had to go work at the very coal mine that had swallowed their families just to make a living.
Ever since that day, Do-sul lived in seclusion, tormented by the guilt of surviving alone. As time flowed on, liberation finally came, and time marched further forward until the year 1991 arrived.
Yamaguchi Takenobu was a high school teacher in Ube. Having belatedly learned about the Chosei Coal Mine, he grew interested in the incident and began gathering pieces of information one by one.
As time continued to pass, he formed a group dedicated to engraving the Chosei Coal Mine flooding disaster into history, gathering like-minded individuals to collect information about the incident. One day, Yamaguchi received word that a roster of the deceased existed at a temple.
Upon seeing the roster, he could not hide his shock. The roster contained the names of 183 deceased individuals—those who died due to Japan's national coal industry policy at the time. Among them, 136 were Joseon people.
However, all the names written there were changed Japanese-style names following forced name changes (Soshi-kaimei). The primary goal of the gathering group was to erect a memorial tablet inscribed with the names of the victims. They understood the pain of those who had been called by their forced Japanese names and wanted to find their real names, rather than the Japanese ones, to engrave on the memorial.
Having discovered hometown addresses written beneath the names, the group sent letters to South Korea and North Korea in 1991. They sent 118 letters in search of the victims' real names and received 17 replies.
The contents of the replies mostly revealed that families who previously had no idea about the life, death, or news of their missing relatives learned through the group's letters that they were victims of the Chosei Coal Mine. A letter arriving fifty years later served as an obituary for their families.
Those who received the letters visited the Chosei Coal Mine to mourn their family members. Calling out the names of their relatives somewhere out in the sea, they yearned for those who had passed away.
In 2006, Chosei Coal Mine survivor Seol Do-sul returned to that sea where he had left his friends behind 65 years earlier. Gazing only at the remaining traces of the old mine site, he mourned his departed friends and shed tears.
Having no other choice than to visit a temple where the spirit tablets of the deceased were gathered and bow before an unfamiliar name of his friend, Seol Do-sul could do little else.
It was revealed that insiders at the mine at the time had been aware of abnormal water inflow phenomena. The miners working in the shafts trusted the supervisors and kept working while the supervisors watched the situation, but the supervisors failed to do their proper jobs.
Japan needed a steady supply of coal for the war. It was revealed that over the course of several days, they engaged in work extracting more coal than usual, and in the process, even removed coal pillars known as tanju, leading to the collapse and shocking the public.
Thanks to the efforts of the gathering group, a memorial tablet honoring the victims of the Chosei Coal Mine was erected in 2013. The reason they went to such lengths was out of conscience.
The gathering group's next project was the excavation of the victims' remains. This, too, was to uphold human conscience. After relentless efforts by the group, they succeeded in locating the mine shaft entrance and opened the blocked-off opening.
"Look here, the mine entrance is open," the gathering group shouted. Those who saw the light of hope after 82 years then began work to excavate the human remains.
Discovered deep within the dark mine shaft, the remains of the victims had turned black by the time they finally emerged into the world in 2025.
Seol Do-sul passed away without ever knowing that the mine shaft had been opened or that the remains had been found.
Expressing apologies on behalf of everyone, Yoko of the gathering group bowed her head and drew attention, stating, "While I cannot become a bereaved family member, I believe humans can make an effort to genuinely understand those feelings and draw close to them. In that sense, I hope you will accept the pain of the bereaved families a little bit as your own and think of this as just the beginning."
During the South Korea-Japan summit meeting this January, both governments agreed to cooperate on DNA testing of the remains. Isn't this truly just the beginning of the journey home for those sleeping beneath the sea?
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.