SEOUL — From 1976 to 1987, military dictators in South Korea u200bswept roughly u200b38,000 people off the streets, corralling them into a welfare center called Brothers Home. The facility was supposed to feed and teach what the government called vagrants — many of them minors — and train them for jobs.
Instead, Brothers Home turned out to be a house of nightmares.
Many were beaten, raped and used for slave labor. More than 650 people died while being held there illegally and unbeknown to their families, according to survivors and investigators.
Brothers Home, in the southeastern port city of Busan, became among the most infamous examples of human rights abuses in South Korea’s modern history.