Dongducheon activists mark 1 year defending former STD center from demolition

The STD Management Center sits derelict in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, October 2024. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

DONGDUCHEON, Gyeonggi Province — At the foot of Mount Soyo, a two-story concrete building, once a sexually transmitted disease (STD) management center, has been left to crumble since its abandonment in 1996. Today, it stands fenced-off, half-hidden behind barbed wire and overgrown brush. Its paint is peeling, sections of the ceiling have collapsed, and graffiti scars its walls.

To most visitors unaware of its history, the site looks like an eyesore and a safety hazard that should have been torn down long ago. But there are those who stand in the way of its demolition.

Outside the fence, blocking access for demolition equipment, stands a small encampment of tents maintained by a coalition of activists from women’s organizations, labor unions, and peace and unification groups. After a year of being exposed to the elements, the tents show signs of wear, their colors faded. Yet they still signal hope that this place, which still evokes painful memories for survivors, can be transformed into a space for healing and remembrance.

Tents are assembled outside the closed STD Management Center in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, Dec. 15, 2024. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

On Aug. 26, the eve of the encampment’s first anniversary, a man arrived drunk, wielding a shovel. He slashed banners, tore through tarps and destroyed signs before being arrested for property damage. The night guard on duty was unharmed, but the attack underscored that the fight to prevent demolition is far from over. Night guards have been stationed here since October 2024, after city officials twice attempted to tear down the building during stalemated dialogue.

Site of painful history

For more than two decades, starting in 1973, the building served as a detention facility where up to 140 women could be confined against their will at any given time. Unlike the women forced into sexual labor by the Japanese military during World War II, those detained here were connected to the U.S. military. They were held because they had, or were suspected of having, sexually transmitted infections and were deemed a risk to U.S. soldiers.

The Korean government, under pressure from United States Forces Korea (USFK), operated this and similar facilities as part of a “sanitary cleanup campaign” to regulate areas around U.S. bases at a time when troop withdrawal was feared under the Nixon Doctrine.

A sign shows opposition to demolition in a protest camp outside the closed STD Management Center in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, Dec. 15, 2024. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Beyond the encampment, the activists have pursued other strategies to ensure the building and its history are not erased. They have set up booths at cultural events and public gatherings around the region and in Seoul, lobbied provincial lawmakers and petitioned the National Assembly. Their petition, which gathered 52,585 signatures nationwide between Sept. 2 and Oct. 2, 2024, also called for reparations and a formal apology to camptown comfort women.

In April 2025, the petition was reviewed and witnesses were invited to testify.

“I wasn’t a prostitute,” stated Kim Eun-hee, who had married an American soldier but was detained for not carrying an ID card in 1980. “I was held [alongside comfort women] and injected with penicillin. It damaged my health so badly I could never safely become pregnant again.”

Kim, now 68, warned that in times of national instability, “a president like Park Chung-hee might again make women sell their bodies,” adding that preserving the building as evidence of past government actions is necessary for preventing history from repeating itself.

Women confined in the facility were forcibly treated with high doses of penicillin, sometimes fatally. Many suffered lifelong health complications in addition to trauma. Some were camptown workers serving U.S. soldiers; others, like Kim Eun-hee, had never engaged in sex work.

Today, the building is the only surviving STD Management Center that also functioned as a detention site. Other buildings in the system, such as testing and examination clinics, still stand but were never used for confinement. Preservation advocates also seek to protect these structures, including the former office of the women’s rights group Durebang near Camp Red Cloud in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province, though city officials have largely ignored those calls.

Graffiti and urban decay fill the interior of the STD Management Center in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, May 26, 2023. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Dongducheon city officials, including members of both major parties, argue that redeveloping the site is essential for the city’s survival. They point to the 2.9 billion won already spent to purchase the land where the former detention center stands, calling it a key site for the Mount Soyo tourism plan. The purchase, however, has raised questions about transparency and whether proper oversight was exercised.

Kim Woo-jung, director of the city’s Welfare and Culture Bureau, testified that demolition is necessary to create opportunities for future generations. He noted that Dongducheon’s population has declined since the early 2000s and that the relocation of more than 75 percent of U.S. troops from Camp Casey to Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, has further weakened the local economy.

Most of the land returned by the U.S. military is mountainous and unsuitable for large-scale projects. Kim said the Soyo Amusement Park development will address these constraints, with plans for hotels, an observation deck and cafes to attract visitors and revive the economy. However, he faced questions about how the city can be certain such development will draw tourists and deliver the promised economic benefits.

Debris clutters the second floor of the STD Management Center in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, May 26, 2023. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Even among those who support preservation, narratives diverge. Lee Myeong-su, director of Dongducheon’s Local History Institute, sees the building as essential to local memory but offered The Korea Times a different interpretation.

“We need to preserve it because it is a site of painful history. What I find unfortunate is that our country focuses on the comfort women under the Japanese army but ignores [those] who were there during the Korean War,” he said. “In both wars, young women were victimized. They endured terrible ordeals, unable to speak out, suffering both mentally and physically.”

For Lee, the women were not only victims but “patriots.”

“They were earning dollars… They were the people who helped build this country,” he said.

As a collector of camptown memorabilia and everyday objects, he suggests remodeling the site into a Korea-U.S. War Memorial Museum, where the story of militarized prostitution could be told alongside how the American presence shaped the community’s unique identity. He laments that the city has shown little interest in preserving any of this heritage to attract visitors, whether positive or negative — a project he acknowledges would require significant effort and investment. Mount Soyo already hosts a Freedom Protection Peace Museum, but its focus is on memorializing the contributions of U.N. combatant nations during the Korean War.

A banner proposes transforming the site into a museum, Dec. 15, 2024. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

For the activists maintaining the encampment, the goal is to transform the site into a memorial and educational space focused on gender, peace and historical accountability. They have held vigils with religious leaders, invited scholars and authors for talks and explained to visitors the building’s role in the camptown cleanup campaign. They argue that preserving the site could attract more visitors interested in women’s rights, human rights and Korea’s complex relationship with the United States, supporting local tourism while giving the community a new symbolic and educational value.

A decision with broader implications

On Nov. 15, 2024, two U.N. Special Rapporteurs warned the Korean government against demolishing the building. In their letter, they cited international standards requiring all branches and levels of government — national, regional and local — to ensure the preservation of sites linked to grave human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence. They stressed the need to consult victims and called for measures aimed at “preserving the collective memory from oblivion and, in particular, at preventing the emergence of revisionist and negationist theses.”

A protest sign shows an artistic depiction of the closed STD Management Center in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, Dec. 15, 2024. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Dongducheon City has offered compromises such as a memorial stone and a digital archive, but activists insist these cannot replace the physical site. The petition review committee closed its hearing by urging the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family to propose ways to bridge the divide. The 2024 state audit, approved in July 2025 by the National Assembly, also advised Gyeonggi Province to mediate, though Gov. Kim Dong-yeon had earlier acknowledged that the province cannot legally block the city’s actions because Dongducheon owns the land. Neither the ministry nor the province has a clear legal mandate, yet their involvement shows this issue cannot be left to the local community alone.

Although the building is in Dongducheon, the history it embodies — the state’s role in promoting sex work campaigns, detaining women and forcing medical treatment — is a national issue. The state’s responsibility was recognized in a 2022 Supreme Court ruling in favor of 122 women who had worked in camptowns between 1957 and 2008, which acknowledged that their human rights had been infringed. While reparations were ordered for 95 of them — 27 plaintiffs passed away before the case was decided — the amount and form were not specified, and no higher law exists to to define reparations, require preservation or involve survivors in memorialization. To date, Gyeonggi Province has provided only modest livelihood support to survivors, and the state has yet to issue an apology.

Preserving the site raises broader questions about how societies confront and remember human rights violations. Could demolition or preservation influence public understanding of past abuses and accountability? How should responsibility be shared among local, provincial and central governments? The debate over this building is about more than a single site. It is about how a nation chooses to face a chapter of uncomfortable history.

Jack Greenberg works as a consultant, researcher and freelance writer. His current focus is on heritage and conservation issues, historical memory debates, truth-seeking and reconciliation, and civilian massacres of the 1950-53 Korean War. He was the recipient of the Global Korea Scholarship and earned a master’s in international studies at Korea University. He is also an alum of McGill University in Canada.