The islands of abuse: Inside South Korea's slave farms for the disabled

Kim Seong-baek worked without pay as a slave in a salt mine

He ran the first chance he got.

The sun beat down on the shallow, sea-fed fields where Kim Seong-baek was forced to work without pay, day after 18-hour day mining the big salt crystals that blossomed in the mud around him. Half-blind and in rags, Kim grabbed another slave, and the two disabled men headed for the coast.
Far from the glittering steel-and-glass capital of Seoul, they were now hunted men on this remote island where the enslavement of disabled salt farm workers is an open secret.
"It was a living hell," Kim said in a recent series of interviews with The Associated Press whose details are corroborated by court records and by lawyers, police and government officials.

The islands of abuse: Inside South Korea's slave farms for the disabled