Seon-gam Island, South Korea – Two males stand on the entrance to a forest surrounded by tall pine bushes on an island south of the capital Seoul.
In the midst of the forest there’s a massive clearing and an excavation website.
The phrases written on a security discover reveal what this forest hides: “Seon-gam Academy Graveyard Restoration Operation”.
Chun Jong-soo and Pak Sung-ki have been simply boys after they have been amongst hundreds cleared off the streets by South Korean authorities for alleged vagrancy, and held for years as inmates at establishments like Seon-gam Academy.
Seon-gam island was solely accessible by boat when Chun and Pak have been first detained in 1965 and 1980, respectively.
Combating to manage his trembling voice, Chun says he remembers the burial website now being excavated right here. He was among the many younger detainees compelled to bury the our bodies of his fellow inmates who died attempting to flee. Chun instructed Al Jazeera how they might get better our bodies that washed up on the island’s shores and bury them at this forest cemetery.
“It was meant to point out us the results of attempting to flee,” Chun mentioned.
“Recollections of seeing these our bodies nonetheless hang-out me in my sleep.”
Tons of and presumably hundreds died amid the compelled labour, violence and sexual abuse that prevailed within the group houses and detention centres – just like the Seon-gam Academy – that have been established throughout South Korea in the course of the nation’s many years of heavy-handed rule from the Sixties via to the Eighties.
Among the most notorious was “Brothers Home”, a so-called welfare centre that was as soon as situated within the southern port metropolis of Busan, the place hundreds have been enslaved and abused in a state-sponsored programme to punish vagrants and clear the homeless from South Korea’s streets.
Whereas police did a lot of the seizures, Brothers House workers have been additionally allowed to patrol town in vans to do the kidnapping themselves. Kids, individuals with disabilities, and the homeless have been rounded up, detained and compelled to work on the house the place survivors recounted witnessing individuals crushed to demise by employees or left to die from accidents.
‘Actual hell’ v TV drama
The existence of those brutal establishments in South Korea has come to wider consideration as Netflix’s Squid Recreation positive aspects world consideration.
Season two of the South Korean drama kicked off late final yr by racking up the biggest viewers ever for the debut of a TV collection by the net streaming service.
In simply three days, the dystopian drama about down-on-their-luck South Koreans enjoying life-or-death video games for a jackpot prize of thousands and thousands amassed 68 million views.
Throughout social media, the Squid Recreation hype has been prompted by experiences the present was primarily based on the real-life horrors that befell at such locations as Brothers House and Seon-gam Academy.
Photos purportedly of the Brothers House have gone viral on-line, exhibiting eerily related interiors to the colorful, Escher-esque facility depicted in Squid Recreation the place individuals compete at kids’s video games and the losers are killed violently.
One Fb person with greater than 1,000,000 followers shared photographs of dimly-lit, derelict hallways painted within the TV present’s iconic pink and inexperienced. Solely later have been the photographs recognized as fakes, generated by AI instruments on-line, in accordance with fact-checking organisations.
South Koreans have additionally criticised comparisons with the TV present, some saying Brothers House was worse in methods than the fictional island jail of Netflix fame.
“Fiction can’t sustain with the horrors of actuality,” wrote one South Korean social media person, who mentioned life was “actual hell” within the houses in contrast with that within the TV present recreation.
In 2022, South Korea’s Reality and Reconciliation Fee, an unbiased investigative physique, confirmed that 657 individuals died at Brothers House in Busan between 1975 and 1986. Testimonies from survivors of the house recounted horrific circumstances that included intense compelled labour, bodily assault, systemic sexual abuse and pervasive merciless and degrading remedy.
“On paper, these services have been established out of the necessity to present aid to impoverished welfare recipients,” mentioned Ha Geum-chul, an investigator for the fee.
Hidden was the true perform of such centres, Ha mentioned.
“Opposite to their said targets, the compelled detention of welfare recipients in opposition to their will, human rights abuses, and compelled labour within the centres have been vastly problematic,” he mentioned.
In response to Ha, such centres have been a part of a “unified system of nationwide vagrancy enforcement and detainee administration” established by the Ministry of Inside and enforced by law enforcement officials who earned “job ranking” factors for every youngster apprehended and admitted.
“Common arrests gave officers as much as three factors whereas an admittance to Brothers House was value 5 factors. This means that law enforcement officials carried out extreme crackdowns to enhance their job performances,” Ha mentioned.
‘Escape this place in any respect prices’
Visiting the positioning of the Seon-gam Academy with Al Jazeera, Chun instructed how he was captured by authorities whereas hanging round Seoul’s prepare station when he was simply 11 years outdated.
“I used to be on my approach to my sister’s home when authorities officers took me of their van. Afterwards, I rode a ship with 40 different captured inmates after we entered the island,” he mentioned.
“Every single day, we wakened at 6am, assembled in entrance of the grounds, and labored within the fields all day. They’d solely give us lunch after we hauled 25kg (55lbs) of rice,” he recounted. “Even then, lunch solely consisted of a fistful quantity of rice and salted shrimp.”
As for what he remembers most about his 9 years on the so-called welfare centre, Chun says everybody was crushed each day for the smallest of offences, reminiscent of being too chatty.
“They only couldn’t bear to allow us to be children,” mentioned Chun, who’s now 69 years outdated.
“They made us use our excrement as fertiliser and didn’t even care if somebody collapsed from heatstroke. That’s why so many people dreamed to flee this place in any respect prices,” he mentioned.
Inmates would staff up in small teams and devise plans to flee. The younger boys would practise swimming in a reservoir on the island within the hope of sooner or later making it to the mainland beneath their very own energy throughout the ocean.
Many would die attempting to undertake the lengthy swim to the shores of Incheon, or the notorious swamps on the island would drown them of their depths earlier than they acquired very far, Chun mentioned.
Chun instructed how his spouse typically requested why he nonetheless screams in his sleep.
“The trauma is one thing that I must carry with me till I die,” he mentioned.
‘A everlasting dent in me’
Pak Sung-ki’s time at Seon-gam Academy was shorter than different inmates reminiscent of Chun.
But what he confronted on the establishment traumatised him for all times.
“Even when I can neglect in regards to the punishment I obtained by the hands of the federal government staff, being sexually assaulted has left a everlasting dent in me,” he mentioned.
Earlier than his time at Seon-gam Academy, Pak lived in a middle-class household. Their house had the one tv set in his neighbourhood on the time.
However his life took a drastic flip when he was picked up at random by authorities officers whereas he walked round downtown Seoul as a 15-year-old.
Launched from Seon-gam after a yr and a half when it was shut down in 1982, Pak was by no means in a position to return house. His household, just like the households of different inmates, didn’t know what had occurred to him. They filed lacking individual experiences on the police station however he was not discovered.
When Pak was ultimately launched from Seon-gam, he went to his outdated home however nobody was house as his household had moved. It was solely when Pak’s household revisited the police one final time to see if that they had any information of their misplaced son – earlier than they moved to the US – that they heard he was in jail.
Pak was reunited together with his household for the primary time in years, however jail partitions now separated them.
“After I got here out [of Seon-gam], I couldn’t work wherever as I didn’t have any abilities. I didn’t have wherever to go,” Pak mentioned.
“So, I lived on the streets and labored as a paperboy and a scrap man simply to make sufficient to purchase meals. At some point, I acquired caught attempting to steal a plate of meals from somebody. That grew to become my first time getting into jail,” he mentioned.
Pak’s household moved to the US shortly after he was reunited with them. He couldn’t comply with because of his prison document they usually by no means have been in a position to totally reconnect as a household. They’d stay separate lives and solely talk via worldwide cellphone calls.
Pak instructed how he hung out out and in of jail till he was 45 years outdated.
“I’ve steadily visited the psychiatric hospital,” the now 59-year-old instructed Al Jazeera, revealing he had tried twice to take his personal life.
“I’ve solely just lately discovered happiness,” he added, telling how he had taken up portray in an effort to “give hope to others”.
A number of of Chun and Pak’s fellow inmates from the academy haven’t been so fortunate – they’ve merely gone lacking and a few have additionally taken their very own lives.
‘I’ve a dream now’
The stays of Seon-gam Academy’s welfare centre and its related buildings are nonetheless intact on the island.
It is among the few – if not solely – welfare centres from that interval in South Korea’s historical past that plans to revive what’s left of its darkish previous and switch it right into a website of commemoration for victims and survivors.
Gyeonggi provincial authorities are on board to help the survivors’ committee of their push for extra work to be undertaken on the cemetery excavation website. Work can also be beneath approach to switch what’s now a brief Seon-gam museum to a everlasting location, and to revive buildings that after served as what Chun and Pak steadily discuss with as a “model of hell”.
In a single nook of the museum are Pak’s work of his time on the academy. Portray now serves as a type of psychological and emotional remedy, he mentioned, recounting how he realized to attract via YouTube movies and it had opened a brand new chapter in his life.
“I’ve a dream now. It’s to attract work for teenagers at youth shelters,” he mentioned, explaining how younger individuals in orphanages and different establishments remind him of himself and the way he desires to point out them to develop their very own inventive abilities.
For Chun, it has solely been 4 years since he first opened up about his expertise on the academy to these closest to him.
Now he desires that openness reciprocated.
If it was South Korea’s regimes of the previous that led Chun, Pak and hundreds of different younger individuals to be detained in opposition to their will, the transient declaration of martial legislation in December by South Korea’s present and impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol has introduced additional misfortune for Soen-gam’s survivors.
The political turmoil attributable to Yoon compelled the cancellation of a deliberate assembly between the island’s survivors, the nation’s minister of the inside and security and the governor of Gyeonggi Province.
“We’re offended and annoyed,” mentioned Chun, who serves because the vp of the Seon-gam Academy survivors committee.
“They have been supposed to come back right here and supply a proper apology in entrance of the survivors,” he mentioned.
“Now, we’re nonetheless ready for one.”
‘Purifying the streets’
Creator of Between Extermination and Regeneration: A Sociology of Brothers House Workhouse, Park Hae-nam, a professor at Keimyung College, mentioned there are thematic similarities between Squid Recreation and the establishments established to imprison the socially and economically marginalised in South Korea.
If individuals within the fictional Squid Recreation have been instruments for leisure, inmates at South Korea’s welfare centres have been “instruments for labour”, Park mentioned.
“Inmates weren’t in a situation to speak and socialise with one another, they usually weren’t in a position to turn out to be members of society as soon as they got here out of the centres,” he mentioned.
“And the truth that lots of people died in these services, that’s one thing that was additionally proven in Squid Recreation,” he added.
In response to Park, the origins of establishments for the homeless goes again to Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonisation in 1945.
“As 4 million displaced Koreans returned from China and Japan, they began to overpopulate areas within the two main cities – Seoul and Busan. With the beginning of the Korean Battle a couple of years later, much more individuals crowded cities and began to trigger each day disturbances. The nation simply didn’t have the infrastructure to accommodate such an enormous inhabitants,” Park defined.
“Newspapers within the Nineteen Fifties have been stuffed with voices that needed these so-called vagrants taken care of. The federal government’s reply was to tuck them away someplace ‘secure’,” he mentioned.
With the emergence of Park Chung-hee’s regime in 1963, the Seoul Metropolitan Rehabilitation Centre grew to become the primary of those so-called “vagrant asylums”.
The army rule would later log out on ordinance No. 410 in 1975, which gave authorities the ability to ship individuals discovered on the streets to services with out an arrest warrant. The initiative was carried out beneath the banner of “purifying the streets”, Park, the sociology professor, mentioned.
“Even when their bodily our bodies survived, individuals inside Brothers House have been murdered as members of society,” he mentioned.
“They have been domesticated and made into beasts in order that they wouldn’t be capable of stay like people [afterwards],” he added.
Park mentioned such establishments – whether or not fictional or historic – symbolise how changing into poor in South Korea “may lead one to excessive distress”.
Slightly than Brothers House or the Seon-gam Academy, Squid Recreation creator Hwang Dong-hyuk mentioned he was impressed extra by darkish Japanese manga reminiscent of “Battle Royale” and “Liar Recreation”. Financial class battle additionally underpins his characters in Squid Recreation, Hwang has mentioned in interviews.
“I needed to point out that any odd middle-class individual on the earth we stay in in the present day can fall to the underside of the financial ladder in a single day,” he mentioned in 2021.
However when Hwang first floated his Squid Recreation script in 2008, it was rejected on the grounds the story was thought of too violent and too unrealistic to be taken significantly. A decade later, when Hwang circulated his script once more, the world had apparently modified and his dystopian state of affairs now not appeared so outlandish to the decision-makers at Netflix.
“The response that I acquired after 10 years was that it was, the truth is, very reasonable – that there are in all probability individuals enjoying this recreation someplace on the earth,” Hwang instructed The Hollywood Reporter in 2021.
“The truth that this story was now not not reasonable, that it was now not absurd, however that it was one thing that was very in contact with actuality after a decade, it saddened me just a little bit as an individual, but it surely additionally introduced me pleasure as a creator,” he mentioned.
Restoration efforts proceed
The follow of detention with out warrants was ramped up beneath the army rule of President Chun Doo-hwan, who oversaw South Korea’s preparation to host the 1986 Asian Video games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics – together with rounding up the homeless and beggars.
Native prosecutors, nonetheless, present in 1987 that solely 10 % of inmates at Brothers House have been the truth is homeless.
On paper, the individuals who have been despatched to “welfare” services ought to have solely been detained for a yr, after which they needed to be launched again into society. However most wouldn’t be so lucky, spending a few years toiling and residing beneath brutal circumstances.
Final yr, South Korea’s Reality and Reconciliation Fee launched its first complete report into circumstances on the welfare centres. Along with the estimated 3,100 folks that have been held inside Brothers House in Busan, the fee discovered 5,000 individuals who have been recognized to have been stored inside 4 different main services.
However the precise variety of such services arrange throughout the nation and their whole inhabitants has nonetheless to be totally decided.
Within the case of Seoul Metropolitan Rehabilitation Centre, which was lively for over 20 years, in accordance with the Reality and Reconciliation Committee, greater than 1 / 4 of its estimated 1,900 residents have been discovered to have died whereas in detention.
![The forest excavation site where a truth commission is searching for the bodies of Soen-gam Academy inmates who were secretly buried here [David Lee/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/The-mass-excavation-site-where-past-inmates-of-Seon-gam-Academy-were-secretly-buried-2-1740034757.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
On Seon-gam Island, the fee undertook a second restoration operation in 2023 on the forest graveyard. The search uncovered 210 human tooth and remnants of 27 gadgets of non-public results. Many of the our bodies that have been buried within the forest had decayed, leaving little behind.
Most have been kids beneath the age of 15.
And whereas the official variety of our bodies recovered to this point has come to a complete of 24, former inmates reminiscent of Chun and Pak imagine that determine will climb a lot larger as excavations proceed.
“There are even our bodies buried in deeper elements of the mountain,” Pak mentioned.
“Greater than 400 our bodies could also be uncovered by the point excavation efforts are completed,” he mentioned.
“Our fellow inmates have been confined in these small graves for greater than 50 years. I’m counting down the times till all of the our bodies are uncovered so I can consolation their souls and pray for them.”
