The government has come under growing pressure to be more flexible in supporting foreign survivors of the August 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The government began in 2001 to study how to treat survivors living abroad as most of them had been unable to benefit from Japanese relief measures. Authorities have mapped out programs to medically or financially support them, but in many cases not aggressively so.
Many survivors, their families and supporters have had to wait for a lengthy legal process in Japan and have expressed discontent with the government's rigid position.
Between July 20 and 24, a team of Japanese physicians visited a welfare facility in Hapchon, South Korea, to conduct health checks and counseling for hibakusha there, the first time Japanese doctors have gone abroad to treat foreign A-bomb survivors.