SOROK ISLAND (South Korea): Kang Sun Bong once considered this tiny island a “hell on earth,” a place where hospital workers beat the leprosy patients exiled here and forced them into harsh labour, sterilisations and abortions. But three years ago, old, sick and broke, Kang returned to the place he’d been banished with his mother decades ago.

His savings wiped out by cancer treatment, the 74-year-old now hopes to live the rest of his life with hundreds of other former patients on Sorok Island, which sits off South Korea’s southwestern tip and has become a mini-welfare state.

Despite the misery many say they endured here, dozens are returning each year, partly for the free medical care, food and housing offered to former sufferers of the disease. But the onetime place of exile has also become a peaceful refuge for many after years of discrimination and hardship, the only place they feel at home.

“I came here because I thought I should die while being nursed,” said Kang, who had a bitter, lonely childhood here, but came back to find the island had utterly changed.

Most returnees are cured of the disease and are free to live wherever they choose. But many say life is better here than outside the island, where prejudice against leprosy still runs deep. Yu Myung-sun, 61, who lived on Sorok for six years until 1974, returned in 2008 after living with other former leprosy sufferers in a village near Seoul. People outside the village “wouldn’t even look at me ... restaurants wouldn’t sell meals to us,” Yu said.

“People on Sorok Island make me feel at ease,” she said. “I feel comfortable here and this is where I’ll die.’’ Starting about a decade ago, the number of returning former patients began gradually increasing. Over the past few years, about 70 people, mostly former residents, have resettled here each year.

Six years ago, a bridge was built linking the island, which is about the size of New York’s Central Park, to the mainland, symbolising the end of its isolation. Growing numbers of tourists are visiting the island, which still preserves historic sites, including a detention building for disobedient patients and another ward where sterilisations took place.

These days, there are about 570 former leprosy patients, with an average age of about 74, as well as six who are currently being treated for leprosy but not contagious, according to officials at the government-run Sorokdo National Hospital. Twelve doctors are on staff.

Leprosy, also called Hansen’s disease, is neither highly contagious nor fatal. It is a disabling chronic bacterial infection that often lies dormant for years before attacking the body’s nerves and slowly causing numbness.

It has been curable since the 1940s thanks to antibiotics. As in many Western countries, leprosy has almost disappeared from South Korea, which reported only six new cases in 2010.

The disease remains a problem in Brazil, India, Indonesia and East Timor. Worldwide the number of new leprosy patients has dropped from 10 million in 1991 to around 230,000 last year.

Active leprosy communities still exist in several countries, including in India, China and Vietnam, and discrimination continues to plague those maimed by the age-old disease.

In South Korea, the stigma remains strong.

The island was established as a leprosarium in 1916 by the Japanese during their 35-year colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. They mobilised patients to produce war supplies and forced sterilization and abortions.

South Korea abolished its anti-leprosy segregation policy in 1963, but rights abuses on the island continued for decades. Recent government investigations confirmed a 1948 slaughter of 84 leprosy patients by hospital workers and security officers over a management dispute.—AP