Nokhwa Project

Overview

The Nokhwa Project was an operation in which the Chun Doo-hwan regime of the 1980s classified university students who had taken part in the student movement as "students subject to special academic status changes" and forcibly enlisted them in the military (forced conscription). The Military Security Command (보안사) then, under the pretext of investigating and "purifying" them, coerced them into renouncing their ideologies and used them as informants (프락치) to monitor peers at their schools and in labor and religious settings. From May 17, 1982, to December 31, 1984, the Security Command carried out the "Nokhwa Operation," and from 1985 to 1987 it conducted "guidance work" (선도업무) under a renamed program. During this process, six university students serving in the military died under mysterious circumstances. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the official name of the case is the "Case of Forced Conscription of University Students and Coercion into Informant Operations."

Background: Forced Conscription

The practice of sending university students to the military to isolate them began in 1971, when students who led protests against military training were forcibly enlisted after the Garrison Decree (위수령). On September 4, 1980, the new military regime collectively conscripted 64 people involved in the student movement, including those who violated the martial law decree. On April 2, 1981, President Chun Doo-hwan instructed the Minister of National Defense to "have students involved in disturbances enlisted in frontline units." On December 1, 1981, the Ministry of National Defense notified relevant government agencies of the "Special Measures Guidelines for University Students Involved in Disturbances," thereby institutionalizing the practice.

According to the Defense Ministry's Commission on Investigation of Past Affairs, when the Ministry of Home Affairs (Police Headquarters) designated those involved in campus disturbances, the Ministry of Education and universities changed their academic records, prosecutors and courts released detained students through suspension of indictment or withdrawal of charges so that they could be conscripted, and the Military Manpower Administration conscripted them while disregarding physical examination and age requirements. The military preferentially deployed them to the front lines and managed them separately. By September 1982, forcibly conscripted persons with a background in the student movement had reached 600.

Development of the Nokhwa Operation

As the number of forcibly conscripted persons rapidly increased and the first conscripts approached discharge, the Security Command decided to manage them more systematically. Under the direction of the head of the Security Command's Counter-Intelligence Division, a unit (심사과, Screening Section) to carry out the Nokhwa Operation was established within the Counter-Intelligence Division in 1982, and on November 17, the "Basic Plan for the Nokhwa Project" was drawn up. According to Wikipedia, the Security Command maintained offices in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, and in the Jinyang Shopping Center on Toegye-ro, Seoul, assigning screening and utilization work to each, respectively. Subjects were detained without warrants for about a week, forced to write dozens of pages of written statements, and subjected to abuse such as beatings and threats. Afterward, they were given leave and assigned informant duties, such as gathering information on the clubs and student movement organizations at their alma maters.