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The lobby of the Seoul Central District Court. (by Kim Tae-hyung, staff photographer)
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The defendant falsely testified that a Korean-Japanese man had not been tortured during interrogation
The investigator with the South Korean Army’s Defense Security Command (DSC) who testified during the retrial of a Korean-Japanese man who had been framed as a spy that the defendant had not been tortured has finally been indicted on the charge of perjury. This is the first time that the prosecutors have indicted an investigator to hold them responsible for perjury during retrials of past incidents. The first security division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office led by senior prosecutor Lim Hyeon filed charges on Dec. 13 against a former DSC investigator surnamed Koh (78) on charges of perjuring himself during the retrial of Yun Jeong-heon, 64, a Japanese-Korean who was framed as a spy, the Hankyoreh confirmed on Dec. 18. Koh had attended the retrial at the Seoul Central District Court on Dec. 16, 2010, as a witness for the prosecutors. When the prosecutors asked Koh during the retrial to confirm that he had not committed any violence against the defendant, such as beating or threatening him, and that he had not coerced or manipulated the defendant into making a false testimony, Koh agreed that he had not. Under cross-examination, the defense attorney asked Koh to admit that he had forced the defendant to sit, while naked, in a metal chair, tied him to the chair with a rope and then beaten him with a truncheon, but Koh denied having done so. Despite Koh’s testimony, Yun’s name was eventually exonerated in 2011 when his retrial reached the Supreme Court, which ruled that he had in fact been tortured. Previously, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had concluded that Japanese-born Yun had been illegally arrested in 1984 while studying at the medical school of Korea University and had been brutally tortured during a 45-day illegal detention. “In an attempt to block demonstrations at universities in the 1970s and 1980s, the Defense Security Command identified Japanese-Korean exchange students as being behind the demonstrations and fabricated this case through torture and without any specific testimony as part of a plan to get to the source of spies who were posing as Japanese-Korean exchange students,” the commission stated while announcing the results of its findings. Though Yun was cleared of charges, he did not forget that Koh had denied that torture had occurred in his testimony. Since Koh had been in charge of Yun’s investigation, Yun had a clear recollection of his face. But far from apologizing, Koh did not even acknowledge Yun’s claims. In Oct. 2012, the year after Yun was acquitted in his retrial by the Supreme Court, he filed a complaint with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office against Koh, accusing him of perjury and conspiracy. When the prosecutors did not make any progress in their investigation, Yun also filed a lawsuit for damages in 2014. This past January, the Seoul Eastern District Court ordered Koh to pay 30 million won (US$27,570) to Yun, concluding that Koh was either directly involved with the torture that occurred in the DSC or at least ordered secondary investigators to take part, but the prosecutors failed to take action five years after the complaint was filed. Finally on Dec. 13, two days before the seven-year statute of limitations for perjury was set to expire on Dec. 15, the prosecutors formally charged Koh with perjury, disregarding the other charges. “The torturers may have escaped prosecution because of the statute of limitations, but the aggressors who brazenly committed perjury and refused to apologize even in the retrial will have their day in court,” said Jang Gyeong-uk, an attorney with Sangrok Law Firm, which is representing Yun. Jang added that it was grossly negligent of the prosecutors to refrain from bringing charges for the past five years. By Kim Min-kyung, staff reporter Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
