Understanding of Life through the Biographical Study on the Old Sakhalin Korean, Dong-Sik Shin

There are about 4,000 Sakhalin returnees living as recipients of livelihood program currently in the year 2015 in South Korea, and they are all first or second generation of Sakhalin returnees born before August 15. 1945, who have experienced the deportation by Japan. Most of them chose permanent return to Korea even having gone through pains of separated families two or three times. The purpose of this research is to explore the social context in that era, record their experiences and find meaning of them through the life of individuals. To achieve this goal, the perception of lifetime process revealed from four times in-depth interview from September to December 2014 targeting Dong-Sik Shin, second generation of Sakhalin returnee. This study included the understanding of life of Mr. Shin and restructuring the meaning of his life. Biographical research method is useful measure to understand how the specific choices of the elderly had made and their behaviours affected the interpretation of present quality of life and life itself. According to the results, Mr. Shin has experienced three times of family separation. He had moved to Japan with his deceased father and lived with “hidden identity of Korean.” After that he had moved to Sakhalin and lived with “sorrow of darkness”, “the lives of Koreans abandoned to the field”, “desire of Salvation through education”, and “the lamb to miss home.” Sakhalin was also home of the heart. It has proven that the reason of his permanent return to South Korea is to make his offspring move to South Korea having stable life rather than his longing for home country. Especially he is taking a role of soothing the soul of the offspring who are not able to see the last day of their parents on this earth not being able to leave a will. It has been proven through biographical research method that Mr. Shin's turning point experiences are still affecting his quality of life as an ongoing process. This research has significance in that this suggested the usefulness of biological research and necessity of in-depth approach toward a quality of life in terms of the elderly's whole lifetime.