Korea seeks to award a Japanese civic group for its role in the recovery of victims' remains at the site of a 1942 Japanese coal mine disaster where more than 100 Korean forced laborers died, Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung has said. If realized, it would mark the first time for the South Korean government to bestow a state decoration to a Japanese civic organization since Korea's liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule. Yun said he would push to honor the Association to Etch the Calamity of the Under Sea Coal Mine Disaster into History in an interview with Yonhap News Agency on Friday, noting a recent bilateral agreement to conduct DNA analysis to identify the remains recovered at the Chosei Mine last year. "The Japanese government had previously not acknowledged that there were victims at the Chosei coal mine site," Yun said. "That's why it was South Korean divers who worked with the Japanese civic group that found the remains. "There will be a government award for the Japanese civic group and our divers who participated in the remains recovery." In 1942, a devastating flood at the