Sorkdo.
Hidden behind its breathtaking natural landscape is one hundred years of pain and sorrow .
Marking a century of Sorokdo National Hospital... and the island's slow transition from land
of agony to a place of healing...
I went to Sorokdo myself - once home to Korea's largest leper colony.
Part one of our two part series.
A six hour drive from Seoul... off the southwestern coast of the Korean Peninsula is an
island.
As you cross over the suspension bridge from the city of Goheung on mainland Korea... to
the island...
everything is notably more serene.
At first glance, the island deceptively beautiful...
it looks like a wonderful vacation getaway.
Deceptive, I say... as this is Sorok-do Island, home to one of the largest leper colonies
in the world.
"Sorokdo National Hospital is a national research institute that specializes in Hansen's disease.
There are currently about 540 former leprosy patients here... some bedridden at the main
hospital, others living in one of seven small villages."
The island is one of few places in Korea where former lepers receive free housing and
medical services.
The living conditions have seen improvements in recent years... and a growing number of
tourists are visiting the island... which still preserves historic sites.
"To the average person visiting Sorokdo, the island could just seem like an unpolluted
piece of land with beautiful landscape.
But I hope they also leave understanding that it's an island built on one-hundred years
of pain and suffering of those with Hansen's Disease."
Its history... stained with blood and tears.
The island's association with leprosy dates back to the Japanese occupation of the Korean
Peninsula...
when the authorities set up a leprosarium on Sorokdo in 1916.
Thousands of lepers were starved and tortured here confined in the hospital's tiny rooms.
Standing proofs of the era... are the remains of detention rooms where lepers were beaten,
the operating theaters where vasectomies and experimental autopsies took place.
But even after the end of Japanese colonial rule, the segregation policy remained in place
under Korean authorities.
Kim Byung-in was 19 when he was banished here.
The now 91-year-old says he's never left this island since.
His legs were amputated a few years later and his nose collapsed, taking on the shape
and color of ginger root.
"I was shipped into Sorok-do Island on January 16th, 1946.
I've never been outside of this island for over 70 years.
Back then, it was a living hell here.
People couldn't even come visit us - my father couldn't even come visit me - because leprosy
was believed to be highly contagious."
"Up until the 1960s, a wired fence stood here dividing the island in two parts.
Lodging for hospital staff and leprosy patients.
This is also where the families could come visit once a month to visit lepers just through
the wired fence.
They could not touch each other and had to keep a distance.
Hence, the name... Sutanjang... or Place of Sadness."
Korea abolished the segregation policy in 1963, but human rights abuses on the island
continued for decades.
"I was shipped to the island in 1969.
A year later, I lost my eyesight.
I was so young and I had suddenly turned blind.
I didn't want to live any more.
I tried to jump off a cliff and kill myself a couple of times.
Back then, life on Sorokdo was very difficult for us inmates.
There were horrendous regulations and we did not have freedom."
The Jebi Wharf is proof of the prejudice that ran deep against former lepers on this island...
even decades after leprosy was found curable and the segregation law scrapped from the
books.
"There were two landing docks here on Sorokdo Island.
One right here - we called it the Jebi Wharf and another on the other side of the island.
This dock was for leprosy sufferers and the other one was for hospital staff and non-lepers.
It wasn't until May 4th, 1984 when Pope John Paul the Second visited this island that the
authorities decided to close down this dock and everyone on this island would use one
gateway."
The shutdown of the Jebi Wharf was highly symbolic and significant for the people of
Sorokdo as it finally meant that lepers were considered as equals.
But, even then a social stigma ran deep in and outside of the island.
"With the establishment of this bridge in 2009 spanning just over 600 meters over seawater,
the once most isolated island in the nation is now just a few minutes drive from mainland.
It's a proof in concrete steel of fading although not completely faded ancient prejudices."