After the Liberation and subsequent partition of Korea, both the Korean National Railroad (KNR) in the South and the Korean State Railway (Kukch'ŏl) in the North operated 4-8-2s inherited from Sentetsu. Of the 83 locomotives that were built of both the Mateni and Matei classes, only 77 remained in 1946; of these, 33 went to the Korean National Railroad in the South, and 44 to the Korean State Railway in the North, though none of the ones operated by the KNR are known for certain to have been of the Mateni class. The six locomotives of both classes that remain unaccounted for were likely either destroyed during the Pacific War or were possibly taken by Soviet Army, which during its occupation of North Korea took a large number of locomotives back to the USSR.
