Man cleared after 42 years as court apologizes for coerced confession under torture
Seoul Court Complex in Seocho District, Seoul, home to the Seoul Central District Court and Seoul High Court. Korea Times file
Man cleared four decades after conviction under 1980s National Security Act
A man who was imprisoned in the 1980s after being tortured into making a false confession has been found not guilty in a retrial, more than four decades after his conviction. The presiding judge offered a rare and emotional apology on behalf of his judicial predecessors who ignored the man’s pleas for justice.
The Seoul High Court’s Criminal Division, led by Judge Kwon Hyuk-jung, acquitted Kim Dong-hyun of violating the National Security Act and the Anti-Communist Law — 42 years after the Supreme Court finalized his conviction in July 1983, sentencing him to five years in prison and five years of suspended civil rights.
Before delivering the verdict, the judge addressed Kim directly. “Our senior judges never listened to your pleas,” he said. “We lacked the courage to acknowledge that your confession was coerced through torture and illegal detention. We failed to declare that the illegal martial law imposed in the 1980s violated the Constitution. I offer this apology on behalf of those judges.”
As the judge spoke, Kim sat in silence, head bowed, visibly weeping. Kim became involved in South Korea’s pro-democracy movement after witnessing the May 18 Gwangju Uprising in 1980 and later published poetry inspired by the event.
Fearing arrest, he fled to Sweden in April 1982 and applied for asylum with Amnesty International’s Sweden chapter. He later withdrew his application and returned to Korea the following month, only to be arrested by agents from the now-defunct Korean Central Intelligence Agency, which would later become known as the National Intelligence Service.
Clarity of suffering and sincerity of words
Authorities charged him under the Anti-Communist Law after learning that he had briefly visited North Korea’s embassy in Sweden.
Kim was illegally detained for about 40 days without a warrant, during which he was repeatedly assaulted and tortured. Despite this, he held onto the belief that the courts would protect him if he could bring his ordeal to light.
Judge Kwon said the court had reviewed decades-old documents, including investigation records and handwritten appeal letters, and was moved by the clarity of Kim’s suffering and the sincerity of his words.
“Your appeals carried every emotion — your cries, despair, hope,” he said. “But not once did the courts, at any level, ever hear your voice.”
The court concluded that Kim was subjected to severe psychological trauma and forced to make false statements while under duress, including a suicide attempt during interrogation.
The ruling acknowledged the use of torture by investigators and declared the resulting confession inadmissible.
The decision marks a rare judicial reckoning with abuses from South Korea’s authoritarian past and offers a measure of justice long denied to one man.
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.