Wikipedia

Brothers Home

The Brothers' Home (Korean: 형제복지원) was an internment camp (officially a welfare facility) located in Busan, South Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. During its operation, it held 20 factories and thousands of people who were rounded up off of the street, the homeless some of whom were children, in addition to college students who were protesting the regime. Only 10% of internees were actually homeless.[2] The camp was home to some of the worst human rights abuses in South Korea during the period[3] and has been nicknamed "Korea's Auschwitz" by various media outlets.[4][5]

Brothers Home
형제복지원
SuccessorSiloam’s House[1]
Formation1960
Defunct1988
PurposeChild protective services (officially)
Location
LeaderPark In-guen
Key people
Chun Doo-hwan
Korean name
Hangul
형제복지원
Hanja
兄弟福祉院
Revised RomanizationHyeongje bokjiwon
McCune–ReischauerHyŏngje bokchiwŏn

Background

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Throughout the 1950s, the Republic of Korea struggled to recover from the devastation of the Korean War.[6] Welfare policies during this period were focused on the housing of orphans, as they were seen as a stain to South Korea's national reputation.[7]: 7  As the 60s unfolded, these policies were expanded to cover the welfare of general vagrants.[a] Vagrants were seen not only as a social minority in need of aid but as beings who should be "redeemed as industrial warriors." A set of laws enacted in 1961 institutionalized the establishment of vagrant housing facilities. The Social Welfare Services Act of 1970(구 사회복지사업법) made every vagrant between 18–65 eligible for social welfare services.[7]: 8-9 

In 1975, the South Korean Ministry of Home Affairs announced "Administrative Order 410" (내무부훈령 제410호),[10] which enabled municipalities and their local police departments to facilitate vagrants independently.[7]: 22  Administrative Order 410 defined vagrants as those who "prevent a healthy social order in cities and society."[11]: 5  This ambiguous definition allowed local authorities to autonomously decide on who classified as a vagrant and who didn't.[b] Likewise, the city of Busan arrested and detained numerous people who were seen on the streets via its local police, identifying them as vagrants.[10] These included panhandlers, abandoned or orphaned children, and the disabled.[6] In some cases, unattended children were taken into police custody unbeknownst to their parents or guardians.[14] Arrested vagrants were distributed among 36 detention facilities across South Korea.[6]

Brothers Home was the biggest among these facilities.[10] First established on July 20, 1960, on Gamman-dong [ko], Busan,[13]: 22  Brothers Home began business as an orphanage[6] under the name "Brothers Orphanage"(형제육아소).[10] As the orphanage expanded in size, it gradually transformed into a general detention facility for housing vagrants of all ages. In July 1975, Brothers Home signed a contract with the city of Busan and became one of its official vagrant detention facilities.[10] Subsequently, Brothers Home relocated to Jurye-dong.[13]: 9 

This crackdown on vagrancy was intensified as rebranding efforts were taken place by the South Korean government in preparations for the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics.[14] On April 10, 1981, upon receiving a report from Military Security Command on the status of panhandling among disabled citizens,[13]: 5  then-president Chun Doo-Hwan ordered prime minister Nam Duck-woo to "crack down on begging and take protective measures for vagrants."[14] In October 6, Chun ordered Nam to "make sure no panhandlers are on the streets of Seoul" before the 1988 Olympics.[13]: 5 

Discovery of Human Rights Abuses

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The South Korean government called the Brothers' Home and other similar concentration camps opened by the Chun Doo-hwan regime during the fourth and fifth republics "welfare centers".

A DW news article reports a minimum of 516 people died over the course of 20 years at the Brothers' Home.[15] Widespread torture was common in these welfare centers.[14][2] In the 1990s, construction labourers dug up about 100 human bones on the mountain just outside where it stood.

The Brothers Home was one of the adoption centers that engaged in the trafficking in South Korea and the adoption agencies and South Korean government destroyed tons of documents to hide their activities and gave false identities to the children while selling them. The Brothers Home Facility sold the adoptees to Australia, Europe and North America and they also raped and used the children as slaves themselves. AP investigated adoptions from 1979-1986 at the Brothers Home and interviewed a woman, J. Hwang who was sold to be adopted in North America by the Brothers Home after she was left there by police in 1982 at age 4. Every child earned the Brothers 10 dollars per month paid by the Korea Christian Crusade adoption agency which later became Eastern Social Welfare Society.[16] Under South Korea's military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, white parents in Europe, Australia and the United States adopted 200,000 majority female South Korean children, which is the biggest adoptee diaspora in the world. The European countries included Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark. This was a major human rights violation by the military dictatorship as most of the Korean girls were not real orphans and had living biological parents but were given false papers to show that they were orphans and exported to white parents for money. The Korea Welfare Services, Eastern Social Welfare Society, Korea Social Service and Holt Children’s Services were the adoption agencies involved in the trafficking of the girls. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission began investigating the scandal in 2022.[17] The military leaders were linked to the agencies board menbers and they wanted to establish closer links with the west and decrease South Korea's population.[18] South Korea's Korean Broadcasting System reported on the case of the Korean girl Kim Yu-ri who was taken away from her biological Korean parents and adopted to a French couple where she was raped and molested by the French adopted father.[19] Across Australia, Europe and the United States, the majority female Korean adoptees asked for an investigation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the child trafficking scandal.[20] Denmark was one of the recipients of the Korean adoptees sold by Korea Social Service and Holt Children's Services.[21][22] Holt Children’s Service was sued by a Korean adoptee in the US for compensation.[23][24]

Involvement of the Protestant Church

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The Brothers' Home was operated in conjunction with the Protestant Church,[which?] with the church on the premises accommodating 3,500 people at any one time. Survivors allege close cooperation between the camp and the church on the premises. One former inmate reports being forced to perform in Christian plays for local and international guests and given Easter eggs as rewards; another was sent to the camp via a Christian missionary; and yet another describes the church and the camp as a business operation run by Pastor Lim Young-soon and Director Park In-kyun (a former boxer and soldier), with children forced to work and run an on-premises Korean adoption operation,[25] including writing letters soliciting donations from families who have adopted children in the past.[2] Some of the adoption partners abroad were also part of Christian organizations.[25]

Aftermath

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Park In-guen was eventually sentenced to two and a half years in prison only for embezzlement.[14]

Footnotes

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  1. ^ All homeless people during this period were identified as "vagrants"(Korean: 부랑인; Hanja: 浮浪人) under South Korean law. In July 2003, the Social Welfare Services Act was reformed to legislate the classification of the "homeless"(Korean: 노숙인; Hanja: 露宿人) as separate from "vagrants".[8] In 2011, the Ministry of Health and Welfare removed the term "vagrant" entirely from South Korean law.[9]
  2. ^ Some South Korean government officials were aware of the problems of Administrative Order 410. Lee Gil-ro,[12] who oversaw the inspection of Brothers Home as chief of Busan's welfare department, criticized in his 1986 thesis that, as the order limited the right to freedom under the cause of welfare, it should've been administered by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and not the Ministry of Home Affairs.[13]: 9  Lee was later persecuted in 1987 for embezzling government funds, which had been provided to him by Park In-geun.[13]: 9 

See also

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References

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  1. ^ 백정원. "실로암의 집". Encyclopedia of Korean Local Culture. Retrieved September 14, 2024.
  2. ^ a b c Kim, Susan (10 December 2021). "Secrets of South Korea's house of horrors hidden in Australia". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
  3. ^ "Child victims of Brothers Home still search for justice". CNN. 24 August 2016. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  4. ^ 박수지 (September 7, 2014). "[단독] '한국판 아우슈비츠' 형제복지원 특별법 곧 재발의". The Hankyoreh (in Korean).
  5. ^ "한국의 '아우슈비츠' 형제복지원‥657명 사망 첫 확인". MBC (in Korean). August 24, 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d Tong-Hyung, Kim; Klug, Foster (19 April 2016). "AP: S. Korea covered up mass abuse, killings of 'vagrants'". Associated Press News. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  7. ^ a b c Jae Hyung, Kim (2023). "한국 집단수용시설의 법제도화와 인권침해, 그리고 국가 책임" [The Institutionalization of Collective Detention Centers in South Korea, Human Rights Violations, and the Responsibility of the State]. 기억과 전망. 48: 169–206. doi:10.31008/MV.48.5 – via KISS.
  8. ^ 김욱. "노숙인 (露宿人)". Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (in Korean). Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  9. ^ 민경락 (November 3, 2011). "노숙인법에서 '부랑인'은 왜 사라졌을까". Yonhap News Agency (in Korean).
  10. ^ a b c d e 장미현. "형제복지원 사건 (兄弟福祉院 事件)". Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (in Korean). Retrieved September 14, 2024.
  11. ^ 정정훈 (2019). "감금의 질서, 수용시설의 권력기술* – 형제복지원과 인권의 재맥락화" [Order and confinement, technologies of authorities in detention facilities* – Recontextualization of Brothers’ Home and human rights]. 도시인문학연구 (in Korean). 11 (1). doi:10.21458/siuh.2019.04.30.005.
  12. ^ Kim, Dong Hun; You, Eun Young; Jung, Sung Koo; Rhee, Joong Eui; Suh, Gil Joon; Youn, Yeo Kyu (2002). "응급의료센터로 내원한 행려환자의 임상적 분석" [The Clinical Analysis of the Homeless Visiting Emergency Medical Centers] (PDF). Journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine (in Korean). 13 (3).
  13. ^ a b c d e f Truth and Reconciliation Commission (August 24, 2020). "형제복지원 인권침해 사건진실규명 결정 관련 참고자료" [References on the decision to investigate the truth about human rights violations at Brothers Home] (in Korean).
  14. ^ a b c d e Jung, Bugyeong (30 May 2020). "Brothers' Home: South Korea's 1980s 'concentration camp'". BBC News. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  15. ^ Kretschmer, Fabian (21 April 2016). "Report highlights past abuse of 'vagrants' in S. Korea". DW.COM. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  16. ^ Kim, Tong-hyung; Klug, Foster (November 9, 2019). "AP Exclusive: Abusive S. Korean facility exported children". AP. Busan, South Korea.
  17. ^ Kim, Tong-hyung (December 8, 2022). "South Korea's truth commission to probe foreign adoptions". AP. Seoul, South Korea.
  18. ^ "More South Korean adoptees who were sent overseas demand probes into their cases". NPR. December 9, 2022.
  19. ^ "양부의 범죄와 양모의 방관...친부모 동의도 없이 프랑스로 입양돼야 했던 김유리 씨의 삶 시사직격 KBS 방송". KBS 추적60분. Nov 21, 2022.
  20. ^ Kim, Tong-hyung (December 9, 2022). "More South Korean adoptees demand probes into their cases". AP. Seoul, South Korea.
  21. ^ Kim, Tong-hyung (August 23, 2022). "Danish adoptees call for S. Korea to probe adoption issues". AP. Seoul, South Korea.
  22. ^ Kim, Tong-hyung (June 11, 2021). "Korean adoptee films pain of mother-child separations". AP. Seoul, South Korea.
  23. ^ "South Korean court orders agency to compensate Asian American adoptee". Associated Press. May 16, 2023.
  24. ^ Kim, Tong-hyung (January 24, 2019). "AP Exclusive: Adoptee deported by US sues S. Korea, agency". AP. Seoul, South Korea.
  25. ^ a b "Abusive South Korean Facility Exported Children". VOA. 9 November 2019. Retrieved 25 December 2021.

35°9′14.51″N 129°0′35.91″E / 35.1540306°N 129.0099750°E / 35.1540306; 129.0099750


 

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