Reopening of memorial hall about Korean conscript laborers hailed

The head of a South Korean committee for the reopening of a memorial hall about Korean conscript laborers in Japan on Monday hailed the re-launch of the hall as "a place for vivid history education."   Hwang Eu-joong, 56, chairman of the Korean Committee for Rebuilding Tanba Mangan, a Seoul-based coalition of South Korean civic groups, celebrated the reopening on Sunday of Tanba Mangan Memorial Hall located in the city of Tanba, northern Kyoto Prefecture. The memorial hall was built in 1989 by one of 3,000 Koreans shipped to Japan and forced to work at a manganese mine during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. During the colonization, millions of Koreans were drafted into the Japanese workforce and the military, and even forced into sexual enslavement at front line brothels.