Torture under Japanese rule.

Torture before Japanese rule




the photos




Macenzie Tragedy of korea
p26

The prisons were an abominatin, torture was freely employed, peridical jail cleanings were made by hanging scores of prisoners at a time, and justice was bought and sold.

p120

The barbarities of the Korean courts and prisons still remain unchecked, my attention was called to the state of the prisons and I visited two of them. In the first at Ping,Yang, I found eigheedn men and one woman confined in one cell, Several of the men were fastened to the ground by wooded stocks. The prisoners wre emanciated and their bodies showed plain signs of horrible disease,Their clothing was of the poorest, the cell was indescribably filthty,and the prisoners were confined in it, without exercierse and without employmen, year after year. One man had been in the cell for six years."

The second prison, Sun-chon, wan much worse, In the inner room there ---so dark that for some moments I could see nothing---I found three men fastened flat on the ground, their heads and feet in stocks and their hand tied together. The room had no light or ventilation, save from a small hole in the wall The men's backs were fearfully scarred with cuts from beatings. Their arms were cut to the bone in many places by the ropes that had been tightly bound around them, and the wounds thus made were suppurating freely.The upper parts of the limbs were swollen;great weals and blisters could be seen on their flesh. One man's eyes were closed, and the sight gone, heavy suppuration oozing from the closed lids. Presumably the eyes had been knoccked in by blows. The men had lain thus confined without moving for days. I had them brought out into the sunshine. It was difficult work; one of them had already largely lost the use of his limbs, owing to their contraction.They were all starved and so broken that they had not even spirit to plead.The place was the nearest to hell i have ever seen.[1]

p80Later in the day, a second Proclamation was spread bradcast, calling on the soldiers to protect their King, to cut off the heads of the chief traitors, and to bring them to him.This gave the final edge to the temper of themob.Great parties sought out the old Cabinet Ministers to slay them.Two Ministers were dragged into the street and slaughtered there with every accompaniment of brutality. One was cut down by a horrible gash extending from the back of the neck to the front of the ears, the crowd shouting like wild beasts as he fell. The people hurled stones on the dead bodies, some stamping on them, somespitting on them, and some tearing limb from limb.One man whipped out his knife and carved a piece of flesh from the thigh of one of the corpses.He put it to his mouth, and said to the others,"Let us eat them."But this was too much even fr the frenzied people,and the crowd shrank back in horror.



Isabella Bird Korea and her Her Neighbors

P33 Korean, too , is the official yamen at the top of the hill, and Korean its method of punishment its brutal flagellations by yamen runners, its beating of criminals to death, their howls of anguish, penetrating the rooms of the adjacent English mission, and korean too are the bribery and corruption which make it and nearly every yamen sinks of iniquity

p441
One of the most striking changes introduced into the Seoul of 1897 is the impovement in the prison, which is greatly owing to Mr.A.B. Stripling fromerly of the Shanghai Police, who, occupying a postion as adviser to the Police Department, is carrying out prison refroms, originally suggested by the Japanese, in a humane and enlighted manner. Torture has disappeared from the great city prison, but there were dark rumor that some of political prisoners, so lately as January,, 1897, were subjected to it elswhere.


p443
Much has been done in the way of prison reform, and much remain to be done, specially in the direction of classification, but still the great Seoul prison contrast most of favorablly with the prison of China and other unreformed Oriental countries. Torture is at least nominally abolished and brutal exposures of severed heads and headless trunks, and beating and slicing of death, were made an end of during the ascendency of Japan.After an afternoon in the prison of Soeul, I could hardly believe it possible that only two years before I had seen several human heads hanging from tripod stands and lying on the ground in the throng of a bussiness street, and headless bodies lyingin their blood on the road outside the East Gate.

Torture under Japanese rule
The photo on the left is the room exhibited in the independent museum in Korea.
The blogger called muninn wrote,

The museum is dedicated to recording Japanese torture and cruelty towards the “patriotic ancestors” of the independence movement. The prison in question, built by the Japanese just prior to annexation, continued to be used well into the postwar period, but it is now overwhelmingly used as a symbol of colonial atrocities and you will find no mention of its postwar legacy.link

I don't know what really happened in the prison, but the left photo is the list of interrogators in the prison:all of them are Korean names.Probably there were Japanse interrogators too, but there were also a lot of Korean military police (ken pei).In fact for instance,in 1910 60% of the police was Koreans.toron so Korean policemen also tortured Koreans.whatever happen in the prison, I think this is also the fact they should know.・・・・・
・・・・I thought Korean people did not know there were Korean prosecutors,but they knew it,There were survivors.Then why is it that they do not tell it at the independent memorial?

The survivors say that Lee Hong Gyu was more cruel and barbaric to his fellow countrymen than his Japanese masters.
link

michael-breen-tells- the truth



After Japanese rule


See also torture during the dictationship in Korea

The Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office said Friday it had come to the tentative conclusion that the allegations of torture with water of a suspect who subsequently died appear to be true.chosun libo

Comedian's Manager 'Tortured by Prosecutors'

Seo Se-won

Prosecutors subjected the manager of comedian Seo Se-won, identified as Ha, to brutal and prolonged torture in connection with a scandal involving his employer, the weekly magazine Sisa Press reports in its July 12 issue. Seo was involved in a corruption and tax scandal in 2002link

Torture Under The "People's Government"


The prosecution has announced that before a suspect died after being beaten while interrogated at the Seoul District Prosecutor's Office, he may have been subjected to water torture as well. ・・・・・・Water torture existed as recently as the nightmarish case of Bak Jong-cheol, and as far back as the dark days of Japanese imperialism. link

Torture Again?

Amid rising suspicion that a criminal suspect died of torture while being interrogated by the prosecution, some insist that the suspect was held upside down and water poured in his nostrils. The allegation gives Koreans a chilling reminder that we had gone back in time to the military authoritarian regime over a decade ago
link

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The Penal Code prohibits the mistreatment of suspects. The Government has ordered investigating authorities to protect the human rights of suspects, and allegations of abuse by authorities of those in custody continued to decline. Nonetheless police sometimes abused persons in custody. Prosecutors continued to place emphasis on securing convictions through confessions, a focus driven by cultural factors, with confession viewed as a necessary basis for the reform and rehabilitation of convicted defendants. The Supreme Court has ruled that confessions obtained after suspects have been deprived of sleep during an interrogation cannot be used in court, but police sometimes questioned suspects throughout the night. Credible sources also reported that in some cases police verbally or physically abused suspects, dispensing beatings, threats, and sexual intimidation in the course of arrest and police interrogation. However, human rights groups reported that the number of such cases continued to decline. Criminal suspects, who previously had been required to wear prison garb in court, were allowed to wear street clothes until proven guilty.

On October 26, murder suspect Cho Cheun-hun was beaten to death in custody (see Section 1.a.).

In 2001 police forcibly broke up three demonstrations, which had turned somewhat violent. In April 2001, 40 demonstrators and 55 police officers were injured at a demonstration near a Daewoo automobile factory. President Kim later expressed deep regret for the police's excessive use of force. Numerous Daewoo workers and police were also injured at the same location in February 2001, when police intervened at the request of Daewoo management because of alleged vandalism and destruction of company property.

In the past, police and security officials who abused or harassed suspects rarely were punished. However, in recent years, under the National Public Service Law and criminal law, a number of police and security officials accused of abuse or harassment have been punished or disciplined through demotion, pay cuts, and dismissal. In addition, 10 police officials were charged under criminal law during the year for abuses committed while on duty.
To investigate and redress the complaints of former detainees who claimed that officials of past military-backed governments tortured them or inflicted excessive punishments, in May 2000 the Government enacted the Special Act on the Investigation of Suspicious Deaths (see Section 1.a.) and the Act on the Restoration of the Honor of and Compensation for Persons Engaged in the Democratic Movement. In 2000 the Commission for the Restoration of Honor and Compensation to Activists of the Democratization Movement was established to review cases. As of September, this Commission had determined that, in the over 1,835 cases reviewed to date, compensation was due in 33 cases, the names of 1,600 activists should be cleared, and students Park Ching-chul and Lee Han-yeul should be recognized posthumously as democracy activists.

Prison conditions were Spartan but generally met international standards. Prison diets were adequate, but the facilities offered little protection against cold in the winter and heat in the summer. Some prisoners claimed that these conditions damaged their health and that medical care was inadequate. By year's end, the Government had installed floor heating and cooling systems in 21 of 44 prisons nationwide as part of a multi-year plan to upgrade the entire prison system. Traveling clinic teams visited prisons, and prison clinics were equipped with x-ray machines.

Inmates occasionally criticized guards for using excessive force or needlessly putting prisoners in manacles.
.link

I think there were tortures by Japanese and Korean policemen under Japanese rule.(though I am not sure exactly what it was like).The fact that the Criminal Procedure Code was reformed in Japan after the war and Japan made it clear in the constitution that criminal procedure must be observed strictly shows that there were grave wrongs in Japanese criminal procedure during that periods.
However, I hope Koreans will not use this facts to fuel the hatred against Japan, ignoring the facts that many Koreans were also the part of that prosecution system.

Notes
[1}Makenzie criticize Japan for not reforming this situation, but it was before the annexation.At this time,Japan sent only a few advisers but the domestic matter was left to Koreans.
sugimoto