South Korea turning remote islands into slave camps for disabled children

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

In one of the world's richest countries - it is a fate too cruel to believe.

But it recently emerged that a remote set of South Korean islands have long been used as slave camps - where families send their mentally disabled relatives to toil in salt farms so that they don't have to care for them.

Slavery thrives on this chain of rural islands off the country's rugged southwest coast, nurtured by a long history of exploitation and the demands of trying to squeeze a living from the sea.

Five times during the last decade, revelations of slavery involving the disabled have emerged, each time generating national shame and outrage.

The case of one man, Kim Seong-baek, prompted a nationwide government probe over the course of several months last year.

Officials searched more than 38,000 salt, fish and agricultural farms and disabled facilities and found more than 100 workers who had received no — or only scant — pay, and more than 100 who had been reported missing by their families.