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By Lee Kyung-mi and Choi Yu-bin, staff reporters

The audience was quiet at first, but as they heard the words the middle school student wrote in his letter, they began shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

“This is my tearful plea to President Park Chung-hee,” it read. “The money my father borrowed from a friend to pay for my older brother’s tuition at Kyungbock High School is being called a payoff for espionage.… This is supposed to be a constitutional state. It seems unfair and it makes me sad. Please consider the Democracy Youth and Student League situation appropriately and make the right decision.… My father is not that sort of person. If you show just a bit of concern for him, I will be a faithful servant of the fatherland.”

The letter was dated Nov. 4, 1974, in the name of Song Cheol-hwan, a third grade student at Kyungsang Middle School in Daegu.

The forty or so attendees in the audience on the morning of Sept. 26 were somber. They were at the Franciscan Education Center in the Jeong-dong neighborhood of Seoul, where the History Justice Act Network was holding a talk titled “Why We Oppose Reviving Yushin.”

Television personality Kim Mi-hwa presided over the proceedings. Whimpers could be heard from the seats as she read this letter to President Park from a young man whose father, Song Sang-jin, was executed 37 years ago in connection with the so-called People’s Revolutionary Party Restriction Committee incident.

The occasion marked a coming together for a few sons who lost their fathers to the Park’s Yushin regime. Chang Ho-gwon, 63, is the son of Chang Chun-ha, who battled the administration during the Yushin era before being found dead under suspicious circumstances. Choe Gwang-jun, 48, is the son of Seoul National University law school professor Choe Jong-gil, who also met with a suspicious end while being investigated by the KCIA and helping out students who were arrested and detained for demonstrations against the Yushin system in 1972.

Song, now 52, could not attend because of a stroke he suffered two days prior. Acquaintances said this could have been the result of stress from a string of press conferences and interviews he gave recently over statements about history made by Park Geun-hye, the New Frontier Party’s presidential candidate and Park Chung-hee’s daughter.

Appearing in black suits and ties, Chang and Choe were calm throughout the proceedings, but their voices took on an edge when they spoke about Park Geun-hye.

Chang recounted an episode in 2007 when Park, then a presidential primary candidate, visited his home to apologize to his mother. “From what I heard later, there wasn’t anything in depth about what she was apologizing for,” he said. “She just came, apologized, and left.”

Since his father’s death, Chang has dedicated his life to bringing the facts to light and restoring his father’s reputation.

“I asked the government to investigate recently after evidence of foul play was found on [Chang Chun-ha’s] remains, but the administration indicated that it had no intent of uncovering the truth,” he said.

He is currently involved in a campaign to gather one million signatures for an investigation into the possibility his father was assassinated. In this, he is following in the footsteps of the elder Chang, who was on a million-signature campaign against the Yushin system at the time of his death.

Choe Gwang-jun also followed in his father’s footsteps as a legal scholar. He is currently a law professor at Kyung Hee University.

His father responded voluntarily to a request to appear before the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Three days later, he was found dead. In 2002, the Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths recognized his death as being in connection with the democracy movement.

The younger Choe was dismissive of Park Geun-hye’s apology. “It was just an apology by a presidential candidate, another form of campaigning,” he said. “A true apology will only be possible after there has been an investigation into the act, and an incomplete apology is worse than no apology at all.”

He went on to say, “These episodes weren’t political issues, they were human rights violations by the authorities. The incidents we’ve found out about are just the tip of the iceberg. There will need to be more investigations in the future, too.”

The two men joined together to read a “Message to the Public,” pleading for a stop to the revival of the Yushin system.

“This is not the time for helpless apologies,” they said. “We need to bring all the facts into the light and hold people responsible. The only way to do so is to prevent the revival of the Yushin groups that still refuse to acknowledge their misdeeds or atone for them before the people.

"Our fathers were not only our fathers. They represent all the people who suffered under the Park Chung-hee dictatorship and its forces. Park Chung-hee cannot be any one person’s father, either.“

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]