Chief Justice Apologizes for Past Wrong Verdicts
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
The top court has made an unprecedented official apology for its wrong rulings during past authoritarian regimes.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Lee Yong-hoon made the public apology Friday in a ceremony at the court in southern Seoul to mark the 60th anniversary of Korea's judicial system.
The apology came three years after Lee pledged to clarify the court's past wrongdoings. He was named the top judge in September 2005.
``For the last 60 years, our rulings were not always praiseworthy. In the prolonged authoritarian regimes, judges sometimes failed to hold an upright position and made rulings that ran against basic principles stated by the Constitution and due procedures,'' Lee said in a speech.
``If the judiciary wants to regain public trust, it must have the courage to admit and reflect on past misdeeds. I apologize on behalf of the judiciary for failing to accomplish its Constitutional duty and giving disappointment and pain to people,'' he said.
During the military administrations in 1970s and 80s, courts had made some unjust rulings under the influence of those in power. Thus courts were derided as the ``maid of those in power.''
Lee said the most effective way of correcting wrong rulings is retrial, citing several cases which the court retried years after its wrong decisions.
In 1958, the top court handed down a sentence of capital punishment to Cho Bong-am, leader of a progressive party who was a rival of then President Syngman Rhee, on espionage charges.
The case of Inhyeok-dang, or People's Revolutionary Party, is called ``judicial murder.'' In 1975, the Park Chung-hee administration, in an effort to oppress the pro-democracy movement, said a group of eight activists tried to organize a subversive pro-communist party. The top court handed down death sentence to them, and they were executed only 18 hours following the ruling.
``The Supreme Court has reviewed rulings of the dictatorial periods and will include 224 unfair cases in a court history book which will be published late this year,'' the chief judge said.
Despite such effort to acknowledge its past wrongdoings, however, critics say the effort is insufficient to regain public trust and promote justice.
In the history book, the 224 cases will not be listed individually but will be dealt with in a general summary. Unlike the military and the intelligence agencies, the court did not organize a fact-finding body to look back on its own history.
The court has also been denounced for giving lenient verdicts to the rich and heavy ones to the poor. Chaebol chairmen usually received suspended jail terms although they were charged for embezzling billions of won in corporate funds and creating slush funds.
President Lee, in a congratulatory speech, advised judges to stay independent of what he calls the ``populism of the judiciary,'' saying that rulings should be made only on the basis of justice and conscience, not at the whim of popularity and prevailing sentiment.