This day in 1975 was the day the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the eight men accused in the People's Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Committee (In Hyeok Dang) case, thereby affirming a military court's death sentence for every one of them. They were accused of trying to overthrow the state on behalf of North Korea and executed a mere 20 hours after the Supreme Court's decision. Thirty years later the calls for their honor to be restored with an inquiry into the truth of what happened are louder than ever before.
It was an open secret at the time that the Yusin dictatorship fabricated the case as a means to rule by fear. An international association of legal scholars based in Geneva immediately called the execution a "dark day in judicial history," and Amnesty International questioned how not a single witness for the accused was heard from by the court. The fact that the truth about the case has still not been clarified likely means that those who were in one way or another involved in the framing them still remain in the related government agencies and institutions.
The Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths found in September of 2002, as the result of an official inquiry, that the case was manufactured by use of torture. Since then, however, there has been no further progress. The victims' families submitted for a court review in November of that year, but after two examinations of the material the court has just let time go by, and in that time even the judge has changed. It cannot be easy to decide to retry a case that was already decided by the Supreme Court. The courts' passive approach to the case is sad, because it would be an opportunity for the judicial system to rid itself of the dishonor of "judicial murder" and be born anew.
The In Hyeok Dang case was the cruelest of human rights abuses under the Park Chung Hee regime. It should therefore be treated as one of the core areas of the current discussion about facing unanswered questions of recent history. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) has begun its own inquiry, but if their honor is to be restored and there is to be compensation the legislation about investigating issues of contemporary history currently being discussed by the ruling and main opposition parties at the National Assembly must be made to include this case as well. There must of course also be a legal restoration of honor through a retrial as well.
The Hankyoreh, 8 April 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Stop Delays in In Hyeok Dang Case. |
