hankyoreh

Judges from Seoul High Court have a moment of silence in front of a shrine at Sorokdo National Hospital in Goheung County

The hospital gallery was filled with about 80 Hansen’s patients, and a heavy silence settled over the court as Kim Bok-ja (74, not her real name) testified.

“When I went where the hospital told me to go, they ripped my clothes off and asked me if I was pregnant. The assistant doctor didn’t even give me any anesthetic. This device was inside me for about an hour and a half, I guess. It was so painful, and I kept bleeding for days afterward,” Kim said.

South Jeolla Province

Kim testified that she had an unwanted abortion in 1967, at the age of 23, when she was staying at Sorokdo National Hospital in Goheung County, South Jeolla Province.

On June 20, a small meeting room at the hospital was filled with the tears and the hopes of people suffering from Hansen’s disease (also known as leprosy). That day marked the beginning of a damages lawsuit that Hansen’s disease patients are filing against the South Korean government, which is being tried in that room by Hon. Kang Yeong-su from the 30th civil law division of the Seoul High Court.

This was the first time since Sorokdo National Hospital opened a century ago that a member of the judiciary has visited Sorok Island to see the site of human rights violations.

“Counsel, I‘ll ask you to quickly move past the sensational parts,” the judge said. Kang was speaking to Jo Yeong-seon, the attorney who is representing the plaintiffs in the case.

Jo had showed the court a picture of glass bottles that were once kept in a bureau at the hospital containing dead fetuses removed from the bodies of women with Hansen’s disease who were given abortions.

after hearing testimonies of patients who were forced to undergo surgery

The hospital also used to store organs extracted from the bodies of deceased Hansen’s patients for research purposes. The hospital reportedly kept the dead fetuses until 1996.

Kim is one of 138 people with Hansen’s disease who are suing the government for violating their human rights by forcing them to have abortions and to be sterilized.

The government‘s position is that the operations were not illegal because they were done with the patients’ consent.

The next person on the witness stand was Kim In-kwon, director of the Wilson Leprosy Center and Rehabilitation Hospital, who had been called by lawyers for the government. Kim used to work at Sorokdo National Hospital.

June 20. (by Kim Tae-hyeong

“It’s true that they weren’t allowed to have children on Sorok Island. The budget for the Sorokdo National Hospital was for the patients; it wasn’t for the patients’ children. I had no choice but to give the patients’ vasectomies, but it was for their own good,” Kim said.

“Sister Marianne and Sister Margaret [nuns who looked after the Hansen’s patients at Sorokdo National Hospital] were personally opposed to abortions, but given the situation at the hospital they felt that it was necessary. It’s not appropriate to judge the mistakes of the past by the standards of the present. At the time, the government was doing its best.”

staff photographer)

At around 1 in the afternoon, there was a short recess. Outside the courtroom, the people with Hansen’s disease voiced their grievances.

“We couldn’t even say that we didn’t want the operation,” said one 78-year-old hospital resident who was given an abortion on Sorok Island in 1959, at the age of 21. “If we didn‘t get the abortion, we had to leave the island, and we had no way to support ourselves.”

The woman said that the second floor of the hospital annex, which was being used on Monday as a temporary courtroom, had once been the main hospital building, and that was where her abortion had been performed.

Around 2 in the afternoon, the judge and the attorneys for the plaintiffs and the defense met in front of the postmortem building, about a three-minute walk from the hospital. Though no longer in use, the red-brick building still looked creepy.

“We victims of Hansen’s disease die three times - once when we breathe our last, once when we are dissected and once when we are cremated,” said Lee Nam-cheol, 67, a hospital resident, standing in front of the judge and holding a microphone. “This is the building where they used to dissect our bodies.”

Lee said that the dissections took place without the consent of the bereaved families.

Next to the postmortem building was a building containing the detention rooms. These tiny dark cells were piled high with dust.

A sign for tourists describes the rooms as “a symbol of human rights violations during the Japanese occupation,” but Lee‘s explanation was a little different. “When people ran away from the island, they were stuck in here. This building was used until the 1980s,” he said.

After this, the judge and the others headed to Manryeongdang, the shrine that once housed the remains of those who had died of Hansen’s disease, where they silently paid their respects to the dead.

So far, patients with Hansen’s disease have filed five different lawsuits against the government for damages.

In 2014, the second civil division of the Suncheon branch of Gwangju District Court, under Hon. Yu Yeong-geun, ordered the government to compensate nine Hansen’s victims who had been given abortions or vasectomies. Since then, there has been a string of similar rulings.

One of these cases is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court, and the other four are being reviewed by the Seoul High Court.

The main issues in these cases are likely to be whether the abortions and vasectomies were compulsory and whether the level of the state’s involvement (or neglect) can be demonstrated.

“Another resident [who was forced to receive a vasectomy] passed away the day before yesterday, at the age of 87. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are all advanced in years, so I hope the government will hurry up and apologize to them,” said Park Seung-ju, president of a group representing inmates at Sorokdo National Hospital.

By Heo Jae-hyun, staff reporter on Sorok Island

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