BeMinor: “The Trial They Waited a Lifetime For: A Record of the First-Instance Court Proceedings for Survivors of Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon.”

Paperslip Note:
In relation to my previous blog post, “The Kookje Daily News: “Brothers Home and Chilseongwon: TRC 3 Decides to Launch Investigations into Human Rights Violation Cases”, I wanted to learn more about the Busan based social welfare facility known as Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon, which is not as well known as Brothers Home. Therefore, please see this older article below, originally published on January 27th, 2026.

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BeMinor Article:
The Trial They Waited a Lifetime For: A Record of the First-Instance Court Proceedings for Survivors of Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon / Lee Jeong-ha

*Please note that this is an OLDER article.
*Original Korean Article published on January 27th, 2026.
ChatGPT English translation posted to Paperslip on September 12th, 2026.
BOLDS and blue highlighting mine.
Please see original Korean article for photos.

“The Trial They Waited a Lifetime For: A Record of the First-Instance Court Proceedings for Survivors of Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon / Lee Jeong-ha”

“By Lee Jeong-ha, activist with Disability and Human Rights “Balmadang Action”
Published: January 27, 2026, 18:09
Updated: January 29, 2026, 12:49

• Survivors board dawn trains and put their everyday lives on hold for the trial

• The courtroom chairs begin to tremble along with the testimony of survivors who lay themselves bare

• The legal arguments systematize the logic of state violence in cases involving mass institutionalization

• A state apology and measures to prevent recurrence are needed”

“Editor’s Note: On January 28, 2026, the first-instance ruling was scheduled in the survivors’ damages lawsuit against the state concerning Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon. An activist in the deinstitutionalization movement observed the entire trial process alongside the survivors and recorded what happened inside and outside the courtroom.

In 2020, while responding to a case in which a disabled person was assaulted and died at a residential facility for disabled people that was being operated illegally, I attended court proceedings through 2023. I was still in the early stages of my activism and wanted to understand the trial process in greater detail, so I searched for television dramas about court proceedings. I did not expect the justice, passion, or remorse I had seen in dramas, but reality was still vastly different from what I had imagined. The calm atmosphere of the courtroom, the ignorance about the lives of disabled people, and the way the national and local governments continued presenting their arguments as though they were on the same side all made for long, tedious hours. Above all, facing the perpetrators’ cartel was unavoidable.

Survivors board dawn trains and put their everyday lives on hold for a trial they had waited a lifetime to see

“Yeonghwasuk” began in 1951 on 22.5 pyeong (approximately 74 square meters) of state-owned land in Dongdaesin-dong, Busan. After receiving approval as the Yeonghwasuk Foundation in 1956, it expanded into “Jaesaengwon,” an institutional facility for adults. Until it closed in 1976, people defined as so-called “vagrants” were forcibly confined there, and severe human rights violations were committed in the process.

The survivors of the case began organizing in December 2022, when they filed a collective petition with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (hereafter, the TRC). Beginning in June 2025, they pursued a damages lawsuit against the state. And on January 28, the case was scheduled to receive its first-instance ruling.

The trial proceeded quickly. Hearings were held once a month beginning in October 2025, for a total of three hearings. This reflected the Busan District Court’s determination to conclude the first-instance proceedings before the composition of the court changed.

Because support policies for survivors of mass institutionalization are based on Busan Metropolitan City ordinances, people must reside in Busan to receive support. As a result, most of the survivors live in Busan.

However, the more than 180 survivors live scattered across the country, meaning that participating in a trial held in Busan required them to clear their entire day. Elderly survivors living in Seoul either took the first train in the early morning or booked accommodation near the courthouse.

I often worried that the trial might end in less than ten minutes, as had happened with trials involving other institutional-facility cases. The weight of the time that the survivors and victims had waited for their entire lives was immense.

November 26, 2025, outside the courtroom on the second hearing date. Survivors of Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon gather before entering the courtroom. Photo by Lee Jeong-ha.

The courtroom chairs begin to tremble along with the testimony of survivors who lay themselves bare

On the first hearing date, the route through the imposing-looking courthouse, after passing through the security screening and finding the courtroom, was complicated. Survivors who had gathered to participate directly in the proceedings filled the area outside the courtroom, while reporters and cameras that could not enter the courtroom were busy moving about. As the lawyers checked the attendance of the survivors who had come to participate in person, I finally felt that “courtroom time” had begun.

The loud voices that had previously echoed outside the TRC, the presidential office, and the National Assembly were absent, and no hand-held placards bearing heartfelt demands could be carried inside. The survivor who had agreed to testify trembled with a tense expression, and the survivors held one another’s hands, sharing their nervousness. The legal team, mindful of the elderly survivors, was busy guiding each person to an empty seat.

At the second hearing, unusually, four survivors were scheduled to testify for 20 minutes each, on different subjects. The stories of the four people, whose ages and periods of institutionalization differed, sounded almost like the story of a single person. They had been taken into the facility through the police and “liaison offices,” endured conditions in which they were not even given water for 24 hours, and eventually escaped.

“Whenever we tried to cross the mountain, there was an artillery position on top of it. A military base… If we went toward the military base and were caught, the villagers would take us back to the facility. If you said you had to cross three ridges of the mountain… if you told me to cross it now, I couldn’t do it. When we crossed the mountain, we were afraid because there were sounds of roe deer and lots of wild animals living there. (When we escaped and were caught and brought back,) they would lay us down on a desk like this, and five or six people would climb onto our backs and beat the soles of our feet mercilessly with pickaxe handles. Until the blood burst out.”

“We couldn’t even think about getting treatment at the time. When I was around 15, I didn’t even know it was a pufferfish. I went to the beach, picked up fish from the sand, and ate them. Then that night, everyone came back to the dormitory and went to sleep… (omitted) The guards on night watch would send us to the bathroom… Then later there were people who had died and been gathered together. Because I was young and had no family, the hospital treated me with contempt. Honestly, if they were human beings, they wouldn’t treat their own children that way. Without even using a stretcher, they dragged everyone away by their legs. They gave us no antidote, not even a single medicine, and just closed the door and left. So I thought to myself: ‘I’m going to die here.’ I wandered around on all fours, hovering between life and death. I crawled around all night so I wouldn’t fall asleep… As far as I know, I think those children died.”

Whenever the testimony continued, other survivors sitting in the audience also sobbed and murmured to themselves. The judge asked whether there would be cross-examination, but no one spoke.

The second testimony began with a quiet voice saying, “I can’t read.” When the courtroom officer, who had initially seemed intimidating, led the oath in a gentle voice, the survivor repeated it.

“When outsiders came to visit the facility, there were the first, second, and third platoons in the ‘showcase rooms.’ … (omitted) Whenever someone was coming, they would make the children change completely into different clothes and sit there. Then, after those people left, they would take all the clothes away again… change them back and put the clothes in the storeroom.”

“I escaped with a friend and went to the Home of the Boy, but I was the only one who couldn’t enter. They said that the liaison office was ‘Gguchhi,’ so I should go there. ‘Gguchhi’ means being on the same side as the facility. I wandered around alone… (omitted) I was caught by the police and sent to Brothers Welfare Center. The people from the liaison office formed gangs and beat me so badly that my leg was broken. Even now, I can’t read. I regret that I was taken away as a child and never had the chance to learn.”

View of Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon and its signboard. Photo from the TRC’s first-half 2025 investigation report.

The legal arguments that structured the logic of state violence in the Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon mass-institutionalization case, for which there were almost no records

The human rights violations experienced by survivors as children—including abuse, sexual violence, forced labor, and other forms of mistreatment—have had enormous effects on their lives even today, amid the state’s continued institution-centered policies and neglect.

In 1961, when Busan City invested public funds to establish Jaesaengwon, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs had identified 9,163 so-called “vagrant children” confined in 17 facilities nationwide. In 1971, Busan City terminated its consignment agreement with Yeonghwasuk, allowing many people to leave the facility. However, after Busan City announced its “policy of housing Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon inmates in other facilities in Busan,” disabled people from Yeonghwasuk were transferred to Chilseongwon, while approximately 300 nondisabled children were re-confined at the nearby Home of the Boy (Paperslip Note: Boys Home?) and Hyeongjewon.

As is still the case with many facilities today, records concerning facility operations and property were relatively carefully maintained, but it is difficult to find the voices or stories of the people who were confined there. Few records of Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon remain from before the facility closed in 1976 amid corruption involving its director and other problems. The only substantial record is a ledger concerning children at Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon that was discovered by chance by the research team studying Brothers Welfare Center.

Inside a platoon room and the internal structure of a platoon. Photo from the TRC’s first-half 2025 investigation report.

In order to prove that they had been confined at Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon, the survivors personally met with the people who had been transferred to other facilities and the operators of those facilities, and obtained their signatures confirming that they had indeed been institutionalized at Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon.

Strangely, this brought to mind the present-day situation in which young people who have left institutions after growing up in care sometimes have to return to facilities to obtain signatures in order to receive settlement funds for independent living. The Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon case faced difficulties in litigation because there was so little documentary evidence capable of proving the survivors’ confinement.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—the child card of another facility to which the third witness had been transferred stated that the person had been transferred there from Yeonghwasuk. Children who had left Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon had gathered to beg and were eventually placed in a municipal child protection center. The survivor said that, although they wanted to go home, even to parents who had beaten them, they gave their family name and address. Yet they were sent back to Yeonghwasuk in Busan.

When the survivor saw their own childhood photograph on the child card displayed on the courtroom screen, they began to cry. They also expressed their sense of injustice by comparing their case with the Brothers Welfare Center and Seongam Academy cases, which had begun litigation earlier.

“Why, even though these were all happening in the same era, would there be records for Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon—for Lee Sun-young, the director of Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon? Even if they wanted something to boast about, there should have been records. But there was nothing to boast about. The things they did wrong. I believe that, by exploiting these powerless and vulnerable children, they must have siphoned things off and that it would all show up somewhere. So I don’t think the records simply don’t exist. I think they existed, but someone hid them or they were destroyed.”

Relatively extensive records remain from Brothers Welfare Center, while in the case of Seongam Academy, a site where remains had been secretly buried was excavated. Thus, even though these were all cases involving institutional facilities, it was somewhat easier to prove the fact of confinement.

Accordingly, at the third hearing on December 24, the legal team began the proceedings by explaining why Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon—once described as part of a “vagrant rehabilitation project”—constituted state violence.

Everyone sitting in the gallery was a survivor and therefore knew Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon intimately. Yet when the lawyer said that the events that occurred there were clearly acts of state violence and that the responsibility of both the Republic of Korea and Busan City was unmistakable, Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon suddenly felt strangely unfamiliar. We had said these things countless times ourselves, but hearing them through the voice of a third party made it feel as though the public was finally recognizing what had happened.

At the same time, it was bitter to realize that painful stories that were difficult to reveal had to be told in a courtroom.

Lawyer: “I heard that you experienced sexual violence. I’m sorry, but could you explain that part in a little more detail?”

Survivor: “After that incident (when my arm was broken because I resisted), they stopped assaulting me. But another victim emerged.”

Lawyer: “Those must have been difficult things to talk about.”

Human rights violations caused by institutional confinement should warrant additional compensation when the violence involved results in serious lasting harm, such as sexual violence or forced drug use. To make this possible, testimony about what happened to the victims is unavoidable. Yet the process of giving that testimony was painful not only for the survivors, but also for the legal team forced to ask such questions in front of many people, the judges who had to hear the answers, and those sitting in the gallery.

“When I first started this work (with the Yeonghwasuk-Jaesaengwon Survivors’ Association), I said that we shouldn’t divide the victims into perpetrators and victims among ourselves—we are all victims. Instead, I said that we should uncover our injustice, establish the truth, receive an apology for it, and find some resolution for what happened to us. I was someone who didn’t know the first thing about human rights.”

Even after nearly two hours of proceedings had concluded, the judges spoke to the survivors who were still sobbing in their seats, saying, “If you submit your testimony in a personal written statement, we will read all of it.” The court consequently allowed ten more survivors to testify at the third hearing.

Notice outside the courtroom on December 24, 2025, the third hearing date. “Today’s Court Proceedings.” 2:30 p.m., Case No. 2025Gahap40702; 2:30 p.m., Case No. 2025Gahap40706. Defendant: Republic of Korea. Photo by Lee Jeong-ha.

Beyond the relief of the state giving up its appeal, we need a state apology and measures to prevent recurrence

At the third hearing, ten survivors entered the courtroom, each holding a pristine sheet of A4 paper. The ten testimony slots granted by the court at the previous hearing were precious, providing a considerable amount of time. Yet they were far too short to encompass each survivor’s long life and profound suffering.

Some therefore came down to Busan several days in advance, spending time meeting other survivors and calming their emotions. In the end, some found it too difficult to read the statements they had prepared and could only hand their written testimonies to the court.

“Your Honor, may I speak too?”

This person was not among the ten scheduled to testify. Before entering the courtroom, they had already been pleading through tears about the years of injustice they had endured. Because they were sitting directly behind me, I was afraid of what might happen at that moment and thought I should somehow help them calm down quickly. But soon I felt ashamed.

“I was sexually assaulted, and I still live with that trauma… (omitted) Why did we have to go through this when we hadn’t done anything seriously wrong? … Back then, I would pick up cigarette butts, take them apart, and sell them with my grandmother at Yeongdo Bridge so we could eat and live… (omitted) I’m so grateful that you recognize this suffering, that the judge has done this for us, and that the lawyers have done this for us. We are absolutely not doing this because we want to receive some huge amount of money in compensation. We simply want to be able to end the rest of our lives with clean bodies and minds. I would be grateful if the judge would allow us, together with everyone here, to receive a fair judgment and deliver a ruling that gives us that chance.”

Once again, the court concluded the hearing by telling those who felt that the proceedings had not given them enough opportunity to speak that they could submit written statements. When the judges said that they would issue the first-instance ruling at the end of January, everyone was relieved that the possibility of a change in the court had disappeared.

Earlier that same day, good news had arrived that the Deokseongwon case, which had received its first-instance ruling, had produced a positive result. But the survivors did not simply relax.

A survivor involved in litigation over Daegu Hope House was being exposed to further harm as a result of the state’s aggressive legal defense. Although the Brothers Welfare Center litigation had concluded and compensation had been awarded, survivors who lacked a social support system were already falling victim to financial fraud.

Brothers Welfare Center was established on the basis of an ordinance enacted by Busan City to establish Jaesaengwon and support Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon. Numerous mass institutionalization facilities across the country, including Daegu Hope House, have continued to operate to this day under state institutional policies. Nevertheless, the TRC—the only body capable of investigating the truth behind cases of mass institutionalization—has reached the end of its term, while the legislation needed to launch the third TRC has been buried amid political conflict in the National Assembly.

The world that unfolds after the first-instance ruling in the Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon case will not be different from the world that existed before it. For this reason, Son Seok-ju, the chairperson who has led the Yeonghwasuk-Jaesaengwon Survivors’ Association, hopes that after the litigation and compensation process, the survivors will not scatter like grains of sand. Instead, he hopes they will amend the Historical Truth and Reconciliation Act, find survivors who remain institutionalized, and live together in a way that allows them to help one another recover.

“Please bring not only us but the other victims out of this darkness now. More than being beaten, what frightened me most was the fear that I would never be able to get out of that place. Now, please, let the Republic of Korea save us. Please help us resolve this injustice before we close our eyes.”

November 26, 2025. After the second hearing, Chairperson Son Seok-ju and fellow survivors take a commemorative photograph. Photo by Lee Jeong-ha.

In August 2025, the government announced that it would withdraw, in a blanket manner, the appeals filed by the state in connection with the state-compensation lawsuits brought by survivors of Brothers Welfare Center and Seongam Academy. Nevertheless, it left open the possibility of continuing appeals in “exceptional cases, such as cases requiring additional factual findings.” As a result, survivors in the Yeonghwasuk and Jaesaengwon case have no choice but to remain anxious even after the first-instance ruling.”

“About the Author

Lee Jeong-ha is an activist with Disability and Human Rights “Balmadang Action.”’