Trigger Warning: Korean Concentration Camps.

Below is information about Korea’s major concentration camps. This is highly upsetting content, so you should not read further if you are sensitive to violent content.

Please note that this page is Under Construction.

Trigger Warning:

The Major Korean Concentration Camps.

1. Seongam Academy (선감학원 )

• 1940s: KSS Founder Kun Chil Paik (alternately: Baek Geun-chil / Paik, Kun Chil / 백근칠) is high ranking amongst the Japanese under occupation. Kun Chil Paik is appointed by the Korean government as Vice President and later President of (Trigger Warning: Very Upsetting Content) Seongam Academy (선감학원 ), a notorious concentration camp originally founded by the Japanese in 1942 on an island in Gyeonggi Province near Seoul. Seongam Academy was a place for “vagrant” boys from the streets which was a part of the Korean government’s “social purification” efforts. Please see the Important Update below:
  

  • Important Update: Please note that we do not know the exact nature of what Seongam Academy was like in the 1940s when KSS Founder Kun Chil Paik (alternately: Baek Geun-chil / Paik, Kun Chil / 백근칠), was Vice President and later President of Seongam Academy. We have recently learned that Seongam Academy may have been at its most notorious in the 1970s, which is decades after KSS Founder Baek Gun Chil was in charge of Seongam Academy. At this time we do not have any documentation to support this claim. When that becomes available, we will include it here.
    

    • Source: Various
      
      Trigger warning: Very Upsetting Content. There is a documentary by SBS on Seongam Academy called 그것이 알고 싶다 (“I want to know about it”) on YouTube.
      

    • Article: ‘Seongam Academy’ children buried on the island… Apology for the first time in 40 years
      

2. 형제복지원 / Brothers Home Orphanage in Busan

• 형제 Brother

• 복지 welfare

• 원 Home or House

• There have been many articles about Brothers Home in the media in recent years. Trigger warning - Very Upsetting Content:

  • Al Jazeera video about Brothers Home

  • AP: S. Korea covered up mass abuse, killings of ‘vagrants’

    By KIM TONG-HYUNG and FOSTER KLUG / April 21, 2016

  • AP Exclusive: Abusive S. Korean facility exported children

    By KIM TONG-HYUNG and FOSTER KLUGNovember 9, 2019
    

3. 삼청교육대 / Samchung Re-Education Camp

• It was not a camp - it was scattered nationwide

• Established by S. Korean President Chun Do Hwan

• About 60,000 people from teenagers to those in their 50s were caught and kind of trained in forced labor camps. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samchung_re-education_camp 

4. 서산개척단 / Seosan Pioneer Group (Seosan Gaecheokdan)

• Seosan Pioneer Group happened in the early 1960s in Seosan against 1,700 people nationwide.

• Police and soldiers collected 1,700 people.

• It was a forced labor camp.