SEOUL, Jan 20 (NNN-YONHAP) — A South Korean man was cleared of mutiny charges on Monday, more than 70 years after he was executed for assisting left-wing rebel troops.
A district court in the southwestern city of Suncheon made the ruling on Chang Hwan-bong, a railroad engineer who was executed by government forces in 1948 during the so-called Yeosu-Suncheon incident.
It is the first retrial of civilian victims from one of the most tragic armed revolts in the nation’s modern history.
Chang, then a 29-year-old, was among 438 civilians whom a government truth panel in 2009 found to have been unjustly convicted and killed for collaborating with insurgent troops.
His family members filed for a retrial in 2013, and the Supreme Court accepted the request in March last year.
“As a member of the judiciary, I want to make it clear that the execution of the ruling was by illegal power of the government and I make a deep apology,” Judge Kim Jung-ah of the Suncheon court said. She ruled his charges were not proved by the evidence.
The incident began in Oct. 19, 1948, when about 2,000 left-leaning soldiers in a regiment in Yeosu rose up in arms, refusing an order to move to Jeju Island to crack down on leftist protests against the South Korean government, which had been established two months before.
The military protest soon grew into a widespread uprising as civilians in Yeosu and Suncheon joined the soldiers. They were largely contained by government troops by early November. Thousands of people are estimated to have been killed by both sides of the conflict.
When government troops recaptured Suncheon later in October, hundreds of people, including Chang, were arrested on charges of helping the rebel forces. Only 22 days later, they were sentenced to death by a court martial for mutiny and challenging state sovereignty and were executed immediately.
Last month the prosecution demanded an acquittal for Chang, citing a lack of evidence to back the charges.
Judge Kim ruled the facts of his crimes cited in 1948 were not proved.
His daughter, Chang Kyung-ja, welcomed the court ruling.
“The state has now apologized, though belatedly. I hope a special law on the Yeosu-Suncheon incident will be enacted as soon as possible so that the victims can be cleared of false charges,” she said.
Relatives of two other victims had jointly requested the retrial, but the court closed their cases as the family members had died.
