Hyun Wo-so is buried in Germany’s Krefeld city, where the former coal miner spent most of his life.
On his gravestone, the words his children asked to inscribe in Korean are simple and final: “I love you” and “Rest in peace”.
“My father is from the silent generation – a generation that is not able, maybe, to say: “I love you” to the children, but they show it in a different way,” his son Martin Hyun told CNA.
That private farewell captures the life of a man whose story is shared by tens of thousands of South Koreans who left home in the decades after the Korean War, bound for West Germany – as it was known then – in search of work, dignity and a way out of poverty.
While their labour helped power South Korea’s rise from devastation to prosperity, these workers – now in their 70s, and many poor and ill – say they feel they have been forgotten.
HUMAN COST
The three-year Korean War, sparked by North Korea’s attack on South Korea in 1950, left the latter impoverished and in ruins.
A reprieve came in 1961 when West Germany agreed to provide loans for rebuilding the economy. In exchange, South Korea supplied urgently needed labour in two sectors: mining and nursing.
About 20,000 young Koreans headed over to Europe.
This included 8,000 men who became miners in West Germany between 1963 and 1977 under a labour-for-loan deal agreed by the two governments.