S. Korea Covered Up Abuse, Killing of ‘Vagrants’

According to a new AP investigation, the South Korean government actively covered up the widespread abuse and killings of “vagrants” in the lead-up to the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Based on hundreds of exclusively obtained documents and dozens of interviews with officials and former inmates at an institution used for homeless, drunkards, and disabled people, the AP found that, to this day, nobody has been held accountable for the slave labor, rapes, and murders because of a high-level cover-up initiated by a government that viewed the Olympics as Korea’s arrival to modernity. “Even as South Korea prepares for its second Olympics, in 2018, thousands of traumatized former inmates have still received no compensation, let alone public recognition or an apology,” the AP wrote. “The few who now speak out want a new investigation. The current government, however, refuses to revisit the case, and is blocking a push by an opposition lawmaker to do so on the grounds that the evidence is too old.”