‘제한된’ 영주귀국사업과 사할린 영주귀국 동포의 건강과 돌봄

Abstract

During the Japanese occupation of Korean peninsular, especially in the 1930s- early 1940s, Korean workers were sent to the Japanese-occupied part of Sakhalin Island to serve as laborers. Even after World War II ended, most Koreans were abandoned on Sakhalin. In the late 1990s, after the Korean government started the repatriation project for Sakhalin Koreans, a new generational division called ‘first-generation of Sakhalin Koreans’ was created. This new regulation created another family separation by legally separating those who can return to Korea from those who cannot. The ‘limited’ repatriation project naturally created physical distance from Sakhalin’s children. Ironically, the limited repatriation project allowed only to a certain category of Sakhalin Koreans seemed to protect another important value like family harmony, by reducing potential discord over caregiving between or within generations of parents and children. This study discusses the discourse and practices of caring and health issues between first-generation Sakhalin Koreans living their old age in Korea and children in Sakhalin, focusing on the ‘restriction’ of the Sakhalin Koreans’ repatriation project. The limitations of the repatriation project seems to have relieved some of the tension surrounding the filial duty and practice of caring between generations. However, as the returned elderly parents aged in Korea, the effectiveness of such physical distancing weakened. The effectiveness of the ‘limited’ repatriation project, which allows children to maintain physical distance to ease the burden of their children, seems to be in a healthy state of elderly where nursing care is not urgent or until the spouse taking care of them is alive. The provision of material and medical services by the Korean government to returned Sakhalin Koreans is special support in the nature of a “quasi-socialist system,” but it cannot be perfect care for the elderly who are in danger of health due to aging. This is because, after all, what is desperately needed in their health crisis is close-distance care of Sakhalin children. As the number of children entering Korea to care for elderly parents in health crisis increases, the relationship between parents and children due to the duty of care has come to compete with other important family values such as family solidarity and harmony.