Lee Kang-bok and Lee Kang-suk

Wealth

Rape

**Lee Kang-byok and Lee Kang-suk** are the main antagonists of the 2009 South Korean novel *Dogani* and its 2011 film adaptation (known as *Silenced* in English). They are a pair of identical twins who are the principal and chief administrator respectively of Benevolence Academy, a school for the deaf, who rape and abuse the children attending the school.

They are both portrayed by Jang Gwang.

## Biography

The Lee brothers inherited Benevolence Academy from their father, who had originally founded the school for the deaf. The two used their positions as Principal and Chief Administrator to sexually abuse the children at the school and cover it up. The two repeatedly sexually assaulted two little girls, Kim Yeon-doo and Jin Yoo-ri, as because one was an orphan and the other had parents who were mentally disabled, they were vulnerable and had no one to protect them. Kang-bok also recorded the rapes he committed using a camera in his office so he could replay them. The two were able to get away with their crimes by bribing the local police not to investigate and by intimidating any teachers and workers on the school who were not in on the abuse.

After one of the teachers, Kim Jung-woo, retired from the school, Lee Kang-byok hired Kang In-ho as his replacement on his recommendation. On his first day, while being visited by a police officer, Kang-byok demanded a bribe from In-ho as a show of intimidation. After spending time at the school however, In-ho discovered the abuses the Lee twins and their colleagues were perpetrating against the students, Yeon-doo and Yoo-ri in particular, as well as the abuses they had allowed teacher Park Bo-hyun to get away with against Jeon Min-su and his brother, and teamed up with human rights activist Seo Yoo-jin to prosecute them.

During the trial however, the Lee twins were able to bribe Yoo-ri's mentally disabled father and Min-su's ailing and destitute grandmother into settling and dropping their cases against them, leaving Yeon-doo as the only one left to testify against them. However, In-ho and Yoo-jin were able to uncover the tapes Kang-bok had filmed of him sexually assaulting students, leading to Bo-hyun and the Lee Twins all getting convicted and found guilty. Despite this, the Lee twins were able to bribe the judge into giving them light sentences and had their defense lawyer offer the prosecutor a position at his law firm, leading him to not press for harsher charges. In the end, Kang-bok and Kang-suk were both given less than a year in prison and only one year of probation after they got out.

Because of the light sentences they got, not long after the trial numerous deaf people showed up at the school to protest and hold a memorial for Min-su, who had given his own life to tackle Bo-hyun to train tracks and kill him. The protestors were dispersed by the police using water cannons after they refused to move.

## Trivia

* Upon its release, *Dogani* sparked so much outcry in South Korea that the teachers from the school the film was based on who had previously evaded justice had their cases reopened and were all convicted, and a law called the "Dogani Bill" after the film was passed repealing the statute of limitations for sex crimes against minors and the disabled.