“The Soviets cart off everything they can lay their hands on. They take all Japanese properties - factories, house furniture’s, food stocks, supplies, vehicles - anything not tied to the earth is loaded on to trains headed to Siberia. They take the 6-month rice stock Gen. Abe gave to the Korean People’s Committee. Korean students demonstrate against the Russians in Hamhung and Sinyiju - to no avail. Every day, train loads of our properties and food stocks leave for Russia and there is not a single thing we can do to prevent it. The communists say that it is all legal - the Russians are collecting their war reparations. Everything we have belongs to the Japanese - according to the Russians; Koreans own nothing.

Stalin formed the 25th Division of the Red Army with prison inmates and other scum of the Soviet nation. The soldiers of the 25th were dumped onto Korea ill-trained and poorly equipped. Many of them did not have proper uniforms and lived off the land. The Red officers looked the other way when their soldiers raped Korean and Japanese women and stole properties. “

for those interested, a kimsoft’s autobiography which includes some stuff about Japanese refugees fleeing from North Korea.