An Army captain was arrested Friday on charges of maltreating trainees, the Army said. The 28-year-old company commander, identified by his family name Lee, allegedly forced 192 conscripts to eat human feces as a disciplinary measure because some of the toilets in his boot camp had not been flushed. Lee is in charge of training recruits at the camp in Nonsan, 200 kilometers south of Seoul. On Jan. 10, Lee asked the draftees to pick up and taste feces, and about half of them followed the order, witnesses said. The soldiers were in their fifth week of a six-week training period. The incident was reported 10 days later when one of the conscripts sent a letter to his friends.
Yoon Kwang-ung, minister of national defense, apologized to the people for the case, vowing to conduct thorough investigation of those responsible for the case and look into other military training camps across the country. ``I¡¯m deeply sorry for the intolerable incident and apologize to the people and families of the conscripts for it," Yoon said in a statement. A special investigation team will be set up to inspect 36 boot camps in the country, Army officers said. Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea said it would launch a probe into the case since it infringed on human rights. The commission said it already dispatched three investigators to the Nonsan training camp. ``We will thoroughly investigate not only this case, but also other possible similar cases in boot camps," a spokesman for the commission said. |