President Lee Jae-myung said on the 21st that he would work to ensure the 1980 Sabuk incident "is remembered not as a history of pain and silence, but as a history in which dignity and justice were set right."
In a written address read on his behalf by Song Sang-kyo, chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at a ceremony marking the 46th anniversary of the Sabuk democratic uprising, Lee said that "uncovering even one more truth buried in the dark shadows and restoring the honor of the victims is the only path that moves beyond the pain toward genuine healing and reconciliation."
Lee said the miners who breathed coal dust at the coal face and shouldered the entire nation's energy supply 46 years ago were not asking for anything grand. Their demand, he said, was "simply to let us live like human beings" — a desperate cry for the most basic rights and for the dignity of labor. He added that the miners' urgent demands turned into a struggle after a police hit-and-run, and that police officers were killed or injured during the crackdown. "The sensational reporting that followed amid the extreme confrontation left indelible wounds on the families of the union branch leader," he said.
"But rather than resolving the situation, state power responded with violence and even branded the miners unjustly," he said. "The brutal arrests and torture, and the discrimination that continued for decades, destroyed the village community and trapped the lives of the miners and residents in deep and dark suffering."
Lee said that while the realities of state violence are belatedly coming to light, "I am well aware that this is still not enough to heal your grief and wounds." He added, "Once again, I offer my deepest condolences to the miners of Sabuk and their families, and to all those who lost their lives or were injured in Sabuk."
The Sabuk incident began in April 1980, when workers at the Dongwon Tanjwa coal mine in Sabuk, Jeongseon County, Gangwon State, went on strike to protest poor working conditions and low wages. The standoff with police escalated into large-scale violence. The martial law command at the time arrested and detained about 200 miners and residents, and human rights violations including illegal detention and torture occurred in the process. The first and second Truth and Reconciliation Commissions designated the case a "human rights violation caused by the improper exercise of public authority" in 2008 and 2024, respectively, and recommended an official government apology.