Families seek closure for wartime mine disaster as Japan-Korea relations thaw

On a crisp February morning, four elderly Korean men bowed their heads towards Japan’s Seto Inland Sea as the surf lapped near their shoes. They were paying respects to relatives entombed in a coal mine deep beneath their feet 80 years ago – among thousands of Korean bodies scattered across Japan in an enduring symbol of a colonial past that has long blighted ties between the neighbours.