way to the mainland, where they hijacked a bus to Seoul. The bus was stopped by the army in the Daebang-dong neighborhood of Dongjak District, Seoul. Twenty members of the unit were shot or committed suicide with hand grenades. A contemporary news report in The New York Times stated that 23 members of the unit, described by the Defense Minister Chung Rae-hyuk as "special criminals," had killed 12 Air Force guards on Silmido, escaped the island dressed as paratroopers, landed on a beach near Inchon around 1pm and then hijacked a bus. Hundreds of soldiers and police were mobilized to intercept the bus forcing it to crash into a tree in southwestern Seoul. After a standoff the unit members detonated hand grenades on the bus killing 15 and leaving four wounded. The "invasion" of Seoul had resulted in 34 killed, 30 wounded and seven missing. The Defense Minister declined to explain why non-military personnel had been kept in military custody. Six guards survived the Silmido uprising. One of the guards, Yang Dong-su, confirmed that the unit's mission had been to infiltrate North Korea and kill Kim Il-sung. Yang stated that most of the unit's members were petty criminals, stating that "They were the kind who would get into street fights a lot." Yang also gives his version of why the uprising occurred: "They revolted because they felt that they were never going to get the chance to go to North Korea and that they would never be allowed to leave the island. They were in despair." Aftermath The four survivors of Unit 684 were sentenced to death by a military tribunal and executed on March 10, 1972. The South Korean government concealed all information regarding Unit 684 until the 1990s. Unit 684 came to public attention with the release of the film Silmido in 2003, but the government only released an official report on the unit and the mutiny in 2006. In 2009, the families of 21 members of Unit 684 sued the South Korean government for ₩670 million in compensation. On May 19, 2010, the Seoul Central District Court ordered that the government pay ₩273 million in compensation to the families. The court found that "the Silmido agents were not informed of the level of danger involved with their training, and the harshness of the training violated their basic human rights" and also acknowledged the emotional pain the government