Just off the southern coast of Korea, Sorokdo is a small island near the Goheung Peninsula. For much of the twentieth century, people with Hansen’s disease were isolated there from mainland society. Within this already separated world stood another place of exclusion: a detention ward enclosed by high brick walls.

Built in 1935, the ward contained fifteen cells where patients accused of violating institutional rules could be confined under the authority of the hospital administration. Detention, deprivation of food, and physical punishment were imposed within a system in which medical care, segregation, and control had become inseparable.

The detention ward remained in use until 1974. Today its narrow cells and brick walls stand almost empty, stripped of the authority that once governed them. On an island created by separation, this was confinement within confinement—a small architecture of control whose silence still holds the memory of those kept inside.