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Part 1: Those Who Went First
Chapter 1: The Death of a Nineteen-Year-Old Who Was Forcibly Drafted into the Military ┃ Jeong Seong-hui Chapter 2: Hanging Hisself Eight Days Before Discharge? ┃ Lee Yun-seong Chapter 3: 40 Years for a Friend Who Died Under Suspiciously ┃ Kim Du-hwang Chapter 4: A Choice Made at the Age of 22: Who Is Responsible? ┃ Han Yeong-hyeon Chapter 5: The Son of a War Veteran Who Died Under Suspiciously in the Military ┃ Han Hee-cheol Chapter 6: A Mother's Bitter Struggle After Losing Her Son ┃ Kim Yong-kwon Chapter 7: The Shackles of Unjust Death Never Go Away ┃ Choi Woo-hyuk

Part 2: State violence comparable to genocide
Chapter 1: The Military: A Prison Camp Chapter 2: Torture, Conversion, and Forced Spying, and Suspicious Deaths Chapter 3: Who Are the Perpetrators? Chapter 4: State Violence on a Level with Genocide

In closing
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Young men who were suddenly kidnapped by the military one day

One day, the police take you away, saying you participated in an illegal protest.
I was put on a police vehicle and taken somewhere, and it turned out to be a military base.
After a few questions like “Does anything hurt?”, you are immediately drafted into the forward unit.
Unable to even tell his family, his parents reported their son missing to the police.

This amazing situation is not virtual.
This happened countless times in the 1980s, about 40 years ago.
Virtually all kidnappings were rampant, with people being dragged off to the military without their consent, without a physical examination, and without contacting their parents.
Not only the Ministry of Defense and the military, but also the police, universities, the Ministry of the Interior, and other state organizations were comprehensively involved in this crime.

This crime is called 'forced conscription'.
Forced conscription was a repressive tactic of the military regime to neutralize student activists critical of the regime.
They used the military, which all young South Korean men had to serve, as a concentration camp, imprisoning and monitoring students and forcing them to convert or engage in spy activities.
According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2,921 people were confirmed to have been forcibly conscripted, and 2,388 of them were targets of spy operations.
In the process, nine young people died under suspicious circumstances.

The Reality of State Violence Reconstructed Through the Lives of Victims

Part 1 of this book vividly reconstructs the short lives of seven victims, how they were drafted into the military and killed.
Jeong Seong-hui was forcibly conscripted at the age of nineteen and suffered from the security service's spy operations, dying from four gunshot wounds to the neck at the guard post.
And it was announced as suicide.
Lee Yoon-seong was the second only child and his father was over sixty years old, so he was not eligible for active duty according to the military service law at the time, but he enlisted under pressure from the police.
He was found hanged in the barracks while being questioned by the security forces just eight days before his discharge.
As expected, they said it was suicide.
Kim Du-hwang was illegally taken away by the police and beaten for nearly ten days before being drafted, and after three months, he was shot in the head and killed at a coastal outpost.
This was also announced as a suicide.
About a year later, his father and mother also passed away from grief.

All deaths that occurred within the military during that period were suicides.
The body was quickly cremated after a military-led autopsy, and the family was asked to sign a statement promising not to raise any issues.
Han Hee-chul's father had to sign a memorandum stating, "I have no objection to my son's 'suicide' and pledge not to raise any civil or criminal issues in the future regarding this matter. I hereby submit this memorandum."
The state did not stop there, it also monitored and followed families.
The Security Service monitored the movements of the Lee Yun-seong family until 1995, and there were even signs of wiretapping their phones.
As Park Myeong-seon, the mother of the deceased Kim Yong-kwon, went around telling people about her son's unjust death, the police began monitoring her every move and, one day, even tailing her.
This was the reality of Korea, dominated by the military and anti-communism.

Organized state crimes to suppress student movements

Forced conscription was first implemented during the Park Chung-hee regime.
Park Chung-hee began using forced conscription as a means of responding to protests based on issues, starting with arresting and enlisting students who had participated in protests against the third constitutional amendment.
Chun Doo-hwan developed this and perfected it into a suppression tactic targeting a group called the 'student movement.'
On April 2, 1981, Chun Doo-hwan issued an order to “enlist students involved in the riots in forward units,” and after several months of preparation, the “Special Measures for University Students Involved in the Riots (Draft)” was established on November 2.
The content was to conscript without considering anything such as age, physical examination, or physical condition.
The police escorted the arrested students to a military base, and the university responded by forcing them to take a leave of absence.


It didn't end with enlistment.
In order to prevent him from returning to the student movement, they forced him to change his ways and demanded that he reveal information about the student movement organization and engage in spy activities.
This is the so-called recording operation.
This is the testimony of Jeong Jae-hong, who was forcibly conscripted in 1981.

“When I went in, it was complete hell.
The violence began when they were made to wear military uniforms without name tags or rank insignia and their belts were unfastened.
I hit him unconditionally.
I was beaten severely, including being punched in the chest and stomach and kicked.
From then on, I wrote a statement.
If I write in the morning, I come in for the test in the afternoon, and if I write in the evening, I come in for the test the next morning.
I get tested twice a day, which is the time I get hit.
If they did not know anything or had no new facts, they would beat their whole body with an octagonal club engraved with a word "Jinsimbong."
It's a club massage.
It wasn't just the butt that was spanked.
“I was covered in bruises from my back to the soles of my feet.” - Page 232.

The Security Command recorded this process of screening, purification, and coercion of spy activities in individual 'personal information files', and there are 2,388 individual personal information files totaling over 100,000 pages.


To break the chain of state violence

In Part 2, the author states that this 'forced conscription and conversion/spoiler operation (Gangjeonchi)' has a seriousness that is different from other human rights violations of the period, such as the Brothers Welfare Center and the Samcheong Education Corps.


First, it was a mass persecution carried out with the clear purpose of destroying political opposition.
At the time, when the opposition party and the media were holding their breath, the most powerful force of resistance to the regime was the student movement.
The government viewed the student movement as an enemy and attempted to crush it through a strong-arm operation.
It can be seen as a politically motivated genocide, like the killing fields in Cambodia or Argentina's 'dirty war'.

Second, this incident did not originate from the misconduct of some government organization or public official, but was carried out at the national level.
Under the direction of the person in power, numerous administrative organizations, including the Ministry of National Defense, the Military Manpower Administration, the National Police Agency, and even the Ministry of Education, were mobilized to inflict physical harm on a specific group of citizens.
This is why national-level reflection and apology are necessary.

Third, the military was used as a means of oppression.
Forced conscription had nothing to do with performing national defense duties.
Even if they failed the physical examination, they were enlisted and monitored at the front.
Soldiers were frequently interrogated and beaten.
It should be evaluated more seriously because it used the military for political purposes, such as martial law or a coup.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission acknowledged the state's responsibility for the Gangjeonchi operation and ruled that the deaths of those who died under suspicious circumstances were "deaths caused by public power."
However, not a single government agency involved has officially apologized, and while the deaths were attributed to public authority, no investigation has been conducted into who was involved and how.


To console the souls of the devastated youth and break the chains of state violence, an official apology from the state is necessary, as well as revealing who was involved in this crime and bringing them before the court of history.
Until now, state violence by the military has not been properly punished in Korea.
The massacre of civilians during the Korean War, as well as the massacres in Jeju on April 3 and Gwangju on May 18, went unpunished.
He was also tolerant of military coups.
The author argues that such unresolved history will manifest itself in the form of martial law and attempted civil war in 2024.
To solidify democracy, we must cast off the shackles of militarism and dismantle the framework of the anti-communist state.
This is why it is important to uncover the truth about the Gangjeonchi operation.