A Seoul court has ordered the government to compensate 19 victims of the notorious Samcheong Reeducation Camp run under the military dictatorship of the former Chun Doo-hwan administration in the early 1980s.

The Seoul Central District Court on Wednesday recognized state unlawfulness regarding the Samcheong program and ruled the government should pay each victim between three million to 280 million won, or two-thousand-200 to 203-thousand U.S. dollars, for a total compensation of over one-point-76 billion won.

The court said the plaintiffs were apprehended and detained without a warrant under martial law, after which they were subject to "social purification education" and forced labor at the camp. They were later ordered disposition of protective custody, in which their rights to liberty and dignity were violated.

The court said it would be valid to assess that acts committed inside the camp constitute power abuse and unlawful acts in duty that were a violation in terms of law and order, while recognizing intentional gross negligence by public officials.

Established in accordance with the 1980 martial law, the Samcheong camp detained over 400-thousand civilians who faced various forms of human rights abuses under the pretext of "social purification" and "voluntary labor."

More than seven-thousand-500 of them deemed at "high risk of recidivism" were subject to disposition of protective custody spanning up to 40 months.