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At 6:05 at daybreak of April 9, 1975, a man in his late thirties whose face had been emaciated under harsh torture was making a will standing on the gallows at the execution place of Seodaemun Prison (currently Independence Park).
" I have not done anything but object to the Yushin establishment. Why should I die on a false charge when I have fought only for national and democratization? My undue sacrifice will asserted by justice,"
(The then chaplain Park Jeong-il who had been present in the execution place bears testimony)
The death row inmate is Mr. Lee Su-Byeong, one of eight who had been sentenced to death on charges of 'forming a People Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Commission(hereinafter referred to as the Reconstruction Commission) to overthrow the government and build a communist nation under instructions from North Korea' at that time.
However, his dying words which had been made entries on the writ of execution book prepared by the Supreme Court at that time was doctored as follows. 1. I'd like to meet face-to-face with my family once. 2. I have nothing further to say. 3. I will deny religious rites. Especially, the paragraph 'I will deny religious rites' was made entries on the writ of execution of death for those 8 inmates in the same way, for it aimed to depress a movement to save the lives of death row inmates of the People Revolutionary Party, which was being driven around the religious circles.
The fabrication of dying words in the People Revolutionary Party case is only the tip of iceberg. An organization of the People Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Commission was not a real entity from the first.
The People Revolutionary Party incident is called to be divided into two stages, the first and the second. The first People Revolutionary Party incident happened in 1964. The Central Intelligence Agency took the demonstration against the Korean-Japanese talks on June 3, 1964 to arrest 41 persons including Do Ye-jong and announced that they pulled strings to have the students stage a demonstration and attempted to overthrow the society under instructions from North Korea. But the Park Chung-hee replaced prosecutors in charges of the case and despite its pendency, it really fizzled out for insufficiency of evidence.
The second People Revolutionary Party incident happened under circumstances similar to those in the first People Revolutionary Party incident. After the May military coup in May 1961, class disparities had widened and to crown it all, Chun Tai-il burned himself to death in October 1970 amid growing discontent with the Park Chung-hee regime. The Park Chung-hee regime legislated the Yushin Constitution to soothe down such dissatisfaction and to stay in power permanently only to fan the flame. College students took to the streets for abolishing the Yushin Constitution and the figures out of government including Jang Jun-ha launched a campaign for gathering one million signatures petitioning the Constitutional Amendment, growing into an anti-Yushin trend enough to gather 500,000 signatures in no more than 10 days.
On April 3, 1974, the students throughout the country were scheduled to stage demonstrations at the same time and in many places to spread such anti-Yushin movement across the country. But, the Central Intelligence Agency, which had smelt a rat in advance, took the opportunity to turn the tables and engaged in political maneuvering to get rid of the anti-Yushin force. This is the publicly known National Federation of Democratic Young Students and subsequently the Central Intelligence Agency put the finger on the People Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Commission, a wirepuller of the National Federation of Democratic Young Students, twisted around its finger by North Korea,
The people had no other choice but accept the government's announcement the whole hog as there were no communications between the government and the people. But the family members of those who taken away were struck dumb. Their mediocre husbands and sons were carried in the newspaper one day and turned into spied who had attempted to overthrow the country. Their family members and religious figures launched on a tearful fact-finding movement to clear himself of espionage charge.
Despite such fact-finding movement, they were sentenced to death by the higher emergency court martial in July that year. In December, Clergyman George Oggle, who was the first to let known that 'the People Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Commission had been invented under torture, was expelled from the country by force and in January 1975, 60 Catholic and Protestant missionaries in Korea submitted an innocence petition. And Kim Ji-ha, who had been imprisoned for the National Federation of Democratic Young Students incident but had been released from prison under a measure on February 15, contributed to the Donga-ilbo 'Asceticism,,...1974' telling that the People Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Commission had been invented and was jailed again.
At last, on April 8. 1975, there was a Supreme Court hearing of the People Revolutionary Party case but it rejected the case. (The then writ of execution was postmarked to the effect that it reached the prosecution chamber at 3, eight hours before the time of conviction despite that the Supreme Court convicted them at 11 on April 8.) The eight death row inmates concerned with the People Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Commission was executed like lightning from 4: 55 at daybreak of 9 April the next day without passing 8 hours since they were convicted, It was the moment that the government dealt a hard blow to the nationwide resistance opposing the Yushin.
After the execution, the International Lawyers Association headquartered in Geneva declared the day as 'a dark day in judicial history'. The National Catholic Justice Realization Priests, the National Assembly for Restoring Democracy and the Amnesty International announced statements and denounced the Park Chung-hee regime's unreasonable brutalities. In response to this, the Park Chung-hee regime forcibly expelled Father James Cynoth from the country and went on to take into custody Reverends Park Hyeong Gyu and Kim Gwan-seok. Furthermore, when Vietnam fell to the North Vietnam on April 30, the Park Chung-hee regime took the opportunity to hold anti-communist rallies nationwide and stressed the legitimacy of the Yushin establishment. What was worse, it announced emergency measure No. 9, a likely generalization of emergency measures already proclaimed. Now, there started a dark rule under which nobody could take actions against the Yushin in public,
Their deaths slipped from the people's memory under the Park Chung-hee's despotism. Their sons had to live in the shade of the world having been branded as 'communists'. Their families felt a lot of pain. The story of the case were in everybody's mouth in late 1989s again. One of them was 'a struggle to defend the memorial to the memory of those who died martyrs for unification on 9 to the last'.
The June Struggle in 1987 was a watershed in history which put a period to the barbarian age. In those days, Kyungpook National University erected a memorial to the memory of Lee Jae-mun and Yeo Jung-nam, graduates of this university. Then, the police left no stones unreturned to take away it without the students' knowledge and they carried it off with a forklift after several hassles.
Following such movement in Daegu, there were their stories afloat in Seoul too. Around April 1990, the 15th anniversary of memorial service to the memory of Lee Su-byeong, a graduate of the university, was held in Kyunghee University. In 1995, they could hold his 20th anniversary of memorial service to his memory in Independence Park in Seodaemun, an open space, not a campus, under the sponsorship of the Association Taking over the National Federation of Democratic Young Students leading the initiative.
Despite the secular cold stare. they managed to hold memorial services in Seoul and Daegu around April 9 every year. In due course, Father Mun Jeong-hyeon and Lawyer Lee Don-myeong, who had taken the initiative in struggling for going to the bottom of the incident, formed a 'Committee for the so-called People Revolutionary Party Incident Fact-Finding and Their Impaired Reputation Restoration' as joint representatives. ( Father Mun Jeong-hyeon was wounded in the leg by a snatcher vehicle while protesting against the police snatching a body at that time.)
With former comrades gathering in one place n this way and the martyrs' death under a false accusation coming to light, there was a growing trend to go to the root of the incident by 2,000. Suspicious deaths were not only confined to the death row inmates of the People Revolutionary Party Incident. Parents of the Korea Association of Bereaved Families for Democracy played a pivotal role in this struggle. As clamors for going to the bottom of suspicious deaths were made for more than 400 days before the National Assembly at Yeoeuiodo, the political circles and government could not stick their colors. Hereby a Presidential Commission on Suspicious Deaths was installed and the Commission became the first government agency to announce in September 2002 that the People Revolutionary Party Incident was fabricated under torture.
The bereaved families, producing the results of the Presidential Commission on Suspicious Deaths, made an application for retrial to the Seoul District Court in December that year. The court did not bat an eyelid to the Presidential Commission on Suspicious Deaths's decision and the conservatives refuted the Commission's decision. The then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Min Bok-gi and 6th bureau director of the Central Intelligence Agency Lee Yong-taek dismissed it as ridiculous and said that 'any false accusation under torture was out of the question'.
The 23rd Criminal Panel Division of Seoul Central District Court(chief judge Lee Gi-taek) disclosed that "we considered the then trial records related to the People Revolutionary Party Construction case and the findings of the Presidential Commission on Suspicious Deaths later so that we proved that they had been tortured and harshly dealt, falling under the grounds for retrial referred to in subparagraph 7 of Article 420 of the Criminal Procedure Act". and "we are going to start a retrial against the sentences passed down on the accused Woo Hong-seon, Song Sang-jin, Seo Do-won, Ha Jae-wan, Lee Su-byeong, Kim Yong-won and Do Ye-jong on December 12, 1974".
The court's retrial will find out the truth first. The fact that the People Revolutionary Party Construction case had no real entity and it was fabricated under torture will be brought to light. By doing do, we should wipe off a dishonor 'a country with a dark day in judicial history' being criticized all over the world. The judiciary which had made himself a cat's-paw of the Park Chung-hee should be reborn as an agency in which the people place reliance through the process of the retrial.
Doing so alone will not appease their false charge to their satisfaction. 23 death row inmates of the People Revolutionary Party Construction and those concerned were a generation which had been born at the end of the Japanese colonial rule, had undergone the Korean War in the childhood and had cherished a dream of democratization and national reunification through the April Uprising in their sweet twenties. They were those who had lived for social changes without bowing to any oppressions since the May military coup in 1961 and had studied the other countries' examples to save the South society impoverished by developmental dictatorship, met people and discussed which way our society should take in the 1970s. They can be seen as all sorts of civic group activists and social reformers for nowadays. Park Chung-hee slew such able workers of the society to stay in dirty power. Yj is said that shortly before his death, Do Ye-jong made a will, 'I regret that I can not live to see a reunified motherland'.
We should carry out activities to inherit 'the will left behind by the heroic martyrs' after the fact was found out. We should make efforts do that our motherland could be reunited and democratization innocent of social inequality could come to stay in Only that time, 'heroic martyrs' death' will lead to 'a real revival of heroic martyrs'.
(Lee Chang-hun, Secretary-General of Lee Su-byeong Memorial Association)
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Bishop Ji-Hak-sun's Declaration of Conscience
