MBC’s ‘PD Notebook’, aired on the 12th, deals with the death of the late Choi Seung-gyun.
In October 2019, a handwritten complaint arrived at the ‘Military Accident Facts Investigation Committee’. The real person is Lee Sang-bong, 61 years old this year. He said that the death of a military comrade for the rest of his life was terribly heartbreaking, and he requested an investigation into the cause of the death of an unknown comrade. Investigator Song Bo-won of the Fact-finding Committee confirmed that the unidentified motive was the late Lieutenant Choi Seung-gyun, who died at the Dongbok guerrilla field in 1984.
At that time, a full-scale investigation into the death of Choi, who was treated as ‘death from overwork’, began. The investigator sent a letter to 206 people at the guerrilla training ground, and received replies from as many as 70 people. And 46 of them were able to hear specific testimonies regarding the cause of Lieutenant Choi Seung-gyun’s death. Considering that it is an old case, it was unusual for the number of volunteers to reach dozens of people. What was the truth of that day they remembered?
“I got hit hundreds of times a day with an iron pipe”
“I was dragged around with a leash like a dog”
“Not a single white color from the neck to the soles of the feet”
“Even if they infiltrated North Korea and were caught, they wouldn’t have been treated like that.”
The beatings and harsh treatment that Lieutenant Choi suffered during the six days of guerrilla training was horrendous. At that time, he became a so-called ‘target’ from the instructors in charge of guerrilla training, and inhumane assault continued throughout the training period. The assault carried out in the name of ‘training’ was truly ‘torture’. Second Lieutenant Choi Seung-gyun, a healthy and bright 23-year-old young man who had been confirmed to join a large company following being discharged from the military, died within six days of guerrilla training.
And Lieutenant Choi’s death left scars and traumas that might not be washed away in the hearts of his comrades… This case was recorded as the first case in which the cause of death was changed from overwork to beatings and harsh acts among over 1,700 cases filed by the ‘Military Fatal Accident Facts Investigation Committee’, which was launched in September 2018 as an organization under the direct control of the President. It took 37 years for the truth of the case to be revealed in 2021. Choi Jeong-eun, the older sister of Choi Seung-gyun. She, who turned 64 this year, said in an interview with the production team, “My father told me that Seunggyun was a child I was looking forward to while he was alive.”
38 years following Lieutenant Choi Seung-gyun’s death, how are the instructors and those in charge who killed a young man by beating? Eyewitnesses of the incident that they met in person in the PD notebook pointed to a specific person as a person who particularly viciously tormented Second Lieutenant Choi. The production team set out to find the instructor who was identified as the perpetrator.
PD Notebook ‘The Death of My Brother and 46 Witnesses – The Death of Second Lieutenant Choi Seung-gyun’ will be broadcast at 10:30 pm on the 12th.