Past South Korean governments blamed for abuses and deaths at homeless facility

Park Sun-yi, left, a victim of abuse at Brothers Home, weeps during a press conference at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission office in Seoul, South Korea (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has found the country’s past military governments responsible for atrocities committed at Brothers Home, a state-funded homeless facility where thousands were enslaved and abused from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The landmark report on Wednesday came 35 years after a prosecutor first exposed the horrors at the facility in the southern port city of Busan and details an attempted cover-up of incriminating evidence which would have confirmed a state-sponsored crime.