South Korea apologises over vagrants’ detention, forced work

SOUTH Korea’s top public prosecutor yesterday apologised over what he described as a botched investigation into the enslavement and mistreatment of thousands of people at a vagrants’ facility in the 1970s and 1980s nearly three decades after its owner was acquitted of serious charges.

The remarks by prosecutor-general Moon Moo-il were the government’s first formal expression of remorse over one of worst human rights atrocities in modern South Korea.

They add pressure for parliament to pass legislation to start a deeper inquiry into what happened at the now-closed Brothers Home, whose owner was exonerated from serious charges amid an obvious cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of government. “The past government created a (government) directive that had no base in laws and used state power to detain citizens at the Brothers Home confinement facility with the disguised purpose of protecting them; more than that (inmates) were subjected to forced labour, while experiencing brutal violence and other harsh violations of their human rights,” Moon said.

“I accept with a heavy heart the results of our committee (on past cases) that the prosecution then caved into pressure from above and closed its investigation prematurely. Even on the charges that were included in the indictment, the defendants weren’t properly punished during the trials.”