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[WEEKENDER] Inside Korea's only prison tasked with handling foreign inmates

koreatimes.co.kr · 2h · first reportShare

CHEONAN, South Chungcheong Province — A roughly 30-minute drive from Cheonan-Asan Station leads to a remote, little-visited area. After surrendering all electronic devices and passing through a security check, visitors navigate a maze-like building and pass through seven or eight heavy steel doors to step inside Cheonan Correctional Institution, Korea's only prison tasked with handling foreign inmates. The prison became the world's first correctional institute designated for foreign inmates in 2010, after the number of foreign nationals in Korea, and crimes among them, rose through the 2000s. As of August, it houses about 500 inmates from 51 countries alongside some 920 Korean nationals. Overcrowding has led to foreign nationals being distributed across multiple prisons, including Daejeon and Yeoju in Gyeonggi Province, but the Cheonan prison is the only one mainly tasked with handling them, complete with an International Affairs division. About 10 staff members speak various languages