September 15, 2025
SEOUL – The South Korean government has decided not to appeal any of the 71 cases concerning state liability for human rights abuse victims who were subjected to forced labor at two internment facilities, Brothers’ Home in Busan and Seongam Academy in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, effectively acknowledging responsibility.
The long-awaited move is likely to expedite compensation for 647 victims of the two privately-owned facilities for “vagrants,” which in reality operated as internment camps for people taken off the streets, including the homeless, children, people with disabilities and student protesters, under South Korea’s authoritarian regimes of the 1980s.
According to the Ministry of Justice on Sunday, the government dropped all 52 appeals to either high courts or the Supreme Court and waived its rights to appeal the 19 court decisions, regarding the state’s compensation payment to the victims.
Of all 71 cases, 49 cases revolved around state compensation to 417 victims of Brothers’ Home, while 22 cases were related to 230 victims of Seongam Academy.
The decision “is a testament to the state’s recognition of the human rights violations (that occurred) due to state violence in the authoritarian era,” Justice Minister Jung Sung-ho said in a statement Sunday.
This followed Jung’s apology to the victims on his Facebook post on Aug. 5, where he promised to discontinue government appeals for such cases. Earlier in March, a Supreme Court ruling found the state responsible for the compensation for the victims of human rights violations.
The compensation will be swiftly provided to all victims by the central government, which will later share the costs with the relevant local governments following necessary discussions. However, no details regarding the amount needed to cover the victims’ compensation were shared.
The government added that it would avoid taking “customary” legal actions against victims of the state crime.
Both Brothers’ Home and Seongam Academy were privately-owned facilities that operated in line with the Korean government’s authoritarian push for “social cleansing,” particularly under the Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan administrations.
The facilities were notorious for unpaid labor, abduction, beatings and other human rights abuses.
According to the latest estimate by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea in 2022, at least 657 people died inside Brothers’ Home, which was designed to segregate the homeless from society. Some 38,000 people were believed to have been forcefully detained there.
Seongam Academy, a detention center for children, had over 4,700 minors put to forced labor, and at least 29 were found to have died.