Sent abroad as 'human collateral': Behind South Korea's economic miracle

In the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea sent thousands of miners and nurses to West Germany. They were not just workers, but a form of “human collateral” for foreign loans that were badly needed after the Korean War. Many spent decades underground in coal mines or working long shifts in hospitals, sending nearly all their wages back home. But while their sacrifices helped fuel the country’s rise into an economic powerhouse, these workers — now in their 70s, and many poor and ill — feel they have been forgotten. There are those who want to come home but cannot. From a miner who became a nurse and then a football referee, to two sisters whose choices to stay or go led to vastly different lives — CNA's Senior Correspondent Lim Yun Suk follows their journey across South Korea and Germany to uncover the human cost behind one of Asia's greatest economic miracles.