South Korean survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima marked the 73rd anniversary of the attack Monday in South Korea.

A memorial event was held at a residential complex in Hapcheon County where around 100 survivors live. The complex, situated in a southeastern region known as the "Hiroshima of South Korea," was built with government assistance.

A memorial on the premises contains tablets inscribed with the names of about 1,000 Hapcheon residents who perished in Hiroshima as a result of the bombing.

An estimated 70,000 Koreans were in Hiroshima or Nagasaki when the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and a similar one on Nagasaki three days later in the closing days of World War II, according to South Korea's Red Cross society. About 40,000 of them died immediately in the blasts.

Among those who survived, an estimated 23,000 returned to the Korean Peninsula.

A person connected with the survivors' housing complex in Hapcheon said many residents ended up in Hiroshima during the war and returned after it ended.