Lee Sang-hoon, a standing commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, speaks on human rights violations of the past at four other vagrant detention facilities in a news conference in Seoul, Sept. 9. Yonhap

A state reconciliation panel said Monday it has confirmed serious human rights abuses at four other detention facilities for vagrants nationwide decades ago, in addition to the infamous "Brothers Home" internment camp in Busan.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) made the announcement after investigating the past realities of the four facilities — the Seoul Metropolitan Rehabilitation Center, the Daegu Metropolitan City Hope Center, Cheonseongwon of South Chungcheong Province and Seonghyewon of Gyeonggi Province.

The four facilities and the Brothers Home were adult vagrant shelters authorized by the government mainly in the 1970s and 1980s under several administrative orders, including the interior ministry's order No. 410, which was issued in 1975 as the basis for the random crackdowns on vagrants and their detention.

The estimated number of detainees was 1,900 at the Seoul center, 1,400 at the Daegu center, 1,200 at Cheonseongwon and 520 at Seonghyewon, compared with 3,100 for the Brothers Home, the commission said.

The TRC said that unspecified civilians designated as vagrants were rounded up by police and civil servants without due process and detained arbitrarily at those facilities for a long period of time.

The detainees then suffered grave human rights violations, such as forced labor, cruel treatment and even death, the commission said, adding many of them were forced to work without pay and holidays. Some were locked in solitary confinement for violating facilities rules or were beaten to death by facility officials.

In the case of the Seoul center, the inmates were forced to do labor for urban reconstruction projects. In 1980, 262 people, more than 25 percent of the Seoul center's estimated detainees of about 1,000, died, the TRC said.

It also noted that the number of corpses donated from Seongjiwon, an affiliate of Cheonseongwon, to nearby medical schools reached 117 from 1982 to 1992. The four facilities have continued to exist to this day, though their names and operating entities and forms have changed.

The commission recommended that the state make an official apology to the victims of forced incarceration at those facilities and come up with plans to support damage recovery and prevent a recurrence of human rights violations.

The TRC confirmed widespread human rights abuses and illegalities at the now-defunct Brothers Home in 2022, and a Seoul court ordered the state in January this year to pay 16 former detainees some 4.5 billion won ($3.3 million) in compensation. (Yonhap)