Hello.

This is reporter Won Jong-jin of SBS Investigative Reporting Department.

People who lived peacefully as someone's husband and someone's father, but were suddenly taken away without knowing the English language and lost everything.

However, people who are neglected to the point of death because they did not learn, because they are not powerful and famous.

A 'past history of ordinary people' abandoned by the Republic of Korea.

We will tell you from now on.


The husband who accepted the day we got divorced with a child...

One day the news broke.

[Choi Ok-seon / late Seo Chang-deok's wife]


"Seo Chang-deok. I remarried, but he was a very kind person and strong in life. Even though they had different sexes, he raised the children very well. He is also good to my mother. There was never a way to go out and not come in.”


Choi Ok-seon's husband, Seo Chang-deok, was born on the small island of Gaeya-do in Gunsan.

It is said that when I was young, my parents all died while on a fishing boat.

Seo Chang-deok, who had to earn money at a young age, started sailing in the sea where his parents died when he was 14.



Changdeok, who rode a fishing boat when he was in middle school and high school, is now 3 or 19 years old.

'Let's make more money as soon as possible'.

Changdeok, a boy with a lot of dreams, boards the early fishing boat Seungryongho, which pays a little more for the crew.

It was a boat that went far away to the shores of Yeonpyeong Island, not off the shores of Gaeyado, Gunsan, to catch guinea pigs.

In 1967, 19-year-old Chang-deok got on that boat and started catching Korean guinea pigs happily.



The sea at night in May was cold and scary, but it was said that he was excited because the fish caught in the nets seemed to be caught in bundles.

But one day, while sweating and fishing, a fleet suddenly appeared from the dark open sea, approached the boat with Mr. Chang-deok, screamed and pointed his gun.



"Leave what you grabbed and get off!"


15 years after returning from being kidnapped by North Korea...

My country has abandoned me and my family


Seo Chang-deok, a 19-year-old boy who was thus kidnapped to North Korea, was detained in North Korea for about three months before being released.

I thought I would die if I was taken to North Korea, but fortunately, I was released safely and returned to my homeland.

However, what I thought was a ten-million luck thing was not fortunate.



Returning to his hometown, Mr. Chang-deok met Choi Ok-seon, who had the pain of divorce, and raised two children, and lived as the head of the family for 15 years.

Then one day, I got a call from the military.


[Choi Ok-seon / late Seo Chang-deok's wife]


"When I looked, they told me to go to the dong office. So I went to the dong office, so I went to the dong office.


It is said that the torture began there.

The record containing Seo Chang-deok's statement at the time reads as follows:



'I tied my hands with a rope and hung iron rods on both poles, then hung my hands there, and it was like my body was hung on the iron rods.

After hanging up like that, the investigator began to beat me without mercy with a wooden pole on the field bed.

For about 20 minutes, I was beaten in my chest and legs, until I vomited blood.'



At a time when the economic growth rate approached 10 percent and society developed and the desire for higher status was expanding, the arrest of spies was a way for the lowest rank civil servants to rise.

Go through all the old ones, take them out again, and look again if possible.

Changdeok, who eventually confessed to committing espionage.

When I came out of prison, everything changed.


[Choi Ok-sun / late Seo Chang-deok's wife]


"Their father's personality was very different. He was different from violence. I tried to live, but he was too violent, so this is not the case. I couldn't live."


Even his three-year-old son, who used to laugh at his father before being taken to the torture chamber, also lost his smile.


[Seo Jin-seok / Son of the late Seo Chang-deok]


"I was not treated like a real person in the neighborhood. Despite my young age, there were always two people following me. When I was in school and elementary school, there were always two people behind me. The teacher beats them as spies, and the kids call them gangsters and gangsters.”

The truth revealed later...

But the whole body is covered with cancer cells

Changdeok said that he literally lived for the next 24 years.


[Seo Jin-seok / the late Seo Chang


-deok's son] "You lived really hard. My father… well,


I didn't get on the boat anymore because I was a spy while on the boat. It's very difficult now because the person on the boat was living on land. I don't make any money. I go to pick up junk as a subject of livelihood protection."


And in 2008, the court acquitted Seo Chang-deok in a retrial, 24 years after the incident occurred.


[Seo Jin-seok / Son of the late Seo Chang-deok]


"When I heard the news of my father's retrial, I was not in the right place, so I didn't contact him at all. I didn't contact him... I saw the news of my father's retrial. I first heard it on the news and after my father was acquitted I got a call, 'My father is not a spy'."


However, in the years filled with pain, all that was left for Seo Chang-deok was his broken body and spirit.


[Seo Jin-seok / Son of the late Seo Chang-deok]


"At the hospital. Father… So, while I was hospitalized in Gunsan, Gunsan, I had a CT scan, and I had a lot of cancer. All over my body. I can't believe it anymore."


'People who ruined my whole life.

People who tortured me to obtain false confessions, received public medals for this, and rose to prominence.

I just want to know the names of those people.”

However, Seo Chang-deok died in the end, not knowing who the people who destroyed him and his family were.

[Seo Jin-seok / Son of the late Seo Chang-deok]


"Just… When I lay down next to my father in a hospital bed, my father covered me with a blanket for the first time. Oh, it wasn't a blanket, it was a jumper. He covered me with a jacket for the first time. That's the most memorable thing. Now. It's been a little over a year since my father passed away... I haven't said I love him to him in 38 years. In my life, that's what I regret the most."

The past history of 'ordinary people' that has not yet been cleared

What I want to say through this report is that the perpetrators who captured and tortured these ordinary people should be held accountable, at least to the extent of disclosing their names.

These torture perpetrators have come to the fore by trampling on other people's lives and have lived a life of humiliation.



Although the investigation and liquidation of the perpetrators who captured and imprisoned university students who were active in the democratization movement and celebrities who have become politicians have been conducted to some extent, the perpetrators who suddenly destroyed the lives of these 'ordinary people' are still hidden behind the curtains of history. there is.

And the bigger problem is that there are not one or two cases like Mr. Seo Chang-deok.


[Kim Chul / Victim of Torture]


"I was tortured by going up to that sentence, being tortured by water. I can't erase anything like this. Rather, I remember it more vividly."

[Lee Sa-young / Victim of Torture]


"They are forcing them to admit it only according to the script they made. Then they just start torturing from that point on."


The state, which did not disclose the list of torture perpetrators even if the victims filed a lawsuit, suddenly came forward last year to apologize.

However, in the process of this 'apology', the victims suffer from the summoning of nightmares again. 

[Kim Yang-gi / Victim of Torture]


"I still fall into trauma when I hear the sound of boots. In the past, when I was tortured, the sound of thumping and thumping coming down to the basement with the army's bullets and coming down to prepare for torture. It's been 10 years since he was acquitted, but now he comes and shows up all of a sudden and says, 'If I apologize, would you accept it?'"


The government recommends an apology to the government agencies saying that it is liquidating the past, and provides statistics on the implementation rate.

However, the implementation was still poor, so it was pecked at the top, and the institutions implemented it reluctantly.


[Park Min-joong / Head of Human Rights and Medicine Research Institute]


"Public officials have no desire to do anything. You're so mean to me.' To be honest, it's like this. It's worse than not doing it. You're giving the victim another second harm."

In order for our society to comfortably talk about 'destruction'


Whenever there is a change of government, whenever you want to use it for a little bit politically, the story of clearing up the past comes up.

But, it is really good to clear the past that politicians can brag about and show others, but really, what is the clearing up and reconciliation of the past that the living victims want the most?


[Kim Yang-gi / Victim of Torture]


"I had that kind of hope that something would change just by holding a candle and doing that, with that kind of expectation."

[Kim Cheol / Victim of Torture]


"But still, it's the country I was born in. How can I... try. Even if I try to think of it as my country, I don't know where the politicians are."


In the presidential election phase, the 'destroy' challenge is controversial.

I think everyone on both sides of the 'Destroying Challenge' controversy has reasons and has something to say.

However, in order for our society to be able to talk about the topic of 'Mukgong' in a really comfortable way, we need to properly reflect on the lives of those who were trampled on in the name of 'Mukgong' and also reflect on those who trampled on someone in the name of 'Myunggong'. maybe do it


[Seo Jin-seok / Son of the late Seo Chang-deok]


"I think it should be revealed unconditionally, because those people used public power to make innocent people spies, and even though those people received medals, wouldn't they get a pension?"

[Lee Sa-young / Victim of Torture]


"I did it myself and made a mistake, so I have to come and do it myself. I don't need anyone else."

[Kim Soon-ja/Victim of Torture]


"I want to see your face. I want to see you face-to-face. I want to meet those people, if I meet them now. I want to look at them and smile.

It's like this? Thinking about it now, it's so pitiful."


(Video coverage: Yang Hyun-cheol / Editing: Jung Yong-hee Cha Hee-joo / Design: Jang Ji-hye Choi Jin-young / Planning/production: D Content Planning Department)