hankyoreh

"Was I a spy, even though I didn’t go to the North Korean embassy, nor North Korea? Now, it’s time for the government to pay compensation for my suffering."

Lee Su-gil, now 78, was tortured and jailed in connection with the so-called East Berlin case, in which South Korean students and intellectuals living in Berlin in the 1960s were rounded up on false charges of having committed espionage for North Korea.

Lee’s right eyelid periodically twitched as he said the words above.

Lee, who went to Germany for study in 1959, played a leading role for Korean nurses to get jobs in the European country. In 1967, he returned home after being blackmailed repeatedly by South Korea’s intelligence agency. Taken into custody, Lee was tortured with high-voltage electricity in the basement of the agency, his toes linked to the poles of a power generator. Interrogators continued to raise the generator’s output, since his left leg was not responsive to the current due to childhood paralysis. Despite 10 days of torture, the agency failed to force him to falsely confess that he was a spy.

At a press conference in Seoul on November 6, Lee said he could not sleep without the aid of sleeping pills for three years after his release. He spoke from a wheelchair, as his right leg is paralyzed due to the torture he received.

In January, significant facts about the East Berlin case were disclosed by a presidential committee on past wrongdoings committed by the intelligence agency, Lee said. However, there are five more victims related to the case whose fate remains unknown, he added.

Lee said he is now forming a group of defense attorneys to file a compensation lawsuit. If he wins, he said, he will donate part of the compensation to an association of journalists and a community group forging ties between South Korean and Germany. Lee also asked journalists to report independently on the proceedings, instead of using the government’s press releases on the case.

Lee, who is a respected pediatrician in Germany, plans to permanently return to South Korea to retire.

[englishhani@hani.co.kr]