107.
“Seongam Hagwon” was a vagrant camp founded in 1942 in
Seongam Island, Ansan City, Gyeonggi Province and closed down in 1982.
The Japanese Government General of Choseon ordered the institution
forcibly took in children by reason of recruiting combatants for the Pacific
War during the Japanese colonial era. Seongam Hagwon was handed over to
Gyeonggi Province after Korea’s liberation from Japan. Regardless of
whether their parents were dead or alive, vagrant or poor children were
abducted and locked away, falling victim to serious human rights violation,
such as forced labor, violence, and sexual abuse22.
108.
“Brothers Home” was an internment camp located in Busan City,
operating in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the name of sheltering vagrants, the
disabled without a family and orphans were rounded up off the streets,
detained, threatened, beat up and forced to labor at the facility. On December
7, 2017, the NHRCK recommended the government to swiftly enact the Bill
to Investigate the Brothers Home Case Resulting from the Interior Ministry
Directive, Etc. in order to probe into the case and rehabilitate the victims.
109.
“Seosan Developing Group” was an organization operating in the
1960s and 1970s to reclaim mudflats in Seosan City, South Chungcheong
Province. Survivors have testified that people were forcibly brought to the
Group to clear abandoned salt farms to farmland, suffering forced labor,
diseases, and persistent beatings23.
110.
As such, when cases of state violence or state’s violation of its duty
of active protection create victims, the state should make strong efforts to
prove into such cases and recover damages through reparation, recovery,
rehabilitation, and the like. However, any official efforts at the government
22 NHRCK, Report on Seongam Hagwon Incident, 2019.
23 NHRCK, Study on Seosan Developing Group Case and Remedies for Victims, 2019.
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