Kang Ki-hoon’s name cleared 23 year after being framed

Posted on : 2014-02-14 15:26 KST Modified on : 2014-02-14 15:26 KST
Not guilty verdict in suicide note ghostwriting case creates an occasion to reform prosecutors
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By Lee Kyung-mi, staff reporter

Perhaps the weight of it all had become too much, the years of anger and injustice. When the judge announced him not guilty of assisting a suicide, one might have expected his face to relax, but it stayed the same.

It was Courtroom 505 in the West Hall of Seoul High Court, at around 2:30 pm on Feb. 13, when the judge delivered the ruling. The seats immediately erupted into applause. Some visitors even wept. But the defendant, 50-year-old Kang Ki-hoon, remained expressionless. It was only after the emotional embrace of his lawyer that it finally sank in and a smile spread over his face.

Judge Kwon Ki-hoon of the court’s 10th criminal division delivered a not-guilty ruling on Feb. 13 in the so-called “Kang Ki-hoon suicide note ghostwriting case,” which some have called South Korea’s version of the Dreyfus affair. It was a vindication 23 years in the making.

The spring of 1991 saw a rash of self-immolations by people demanding a more democratic system. On May 18 of that year, ten days after the suicide of National Democratic Movement Union social affairs director Kim Ki-sul, an article on the Kukmin Ilbo society section quoted a sources in the prosecutors as saying, “The suicide note for Kim Ki-sul, who committed suicide by self-immolation on a rooftop at Sogang University, was written for him by a certain ‘K’.” It was a foreshadowing of the terrible fate that awaited Kang.

Not long after, prosecutors released analysis findings from the National Forensic Service (NFS) that concluded the handwriting on the note was not Kim’s.

Kang, a colleague of Kim’s, appeared before the prosecutors for questioning. He was instructed to remove his pants and submit to a rectal examination before investigators, and he was kept in one of the cells that became derisively known as “dovecotes.”

“The old man is coming,” he heard someone say, and a man appeared.

“I’m Shin Sang-gyu, the prosecutor,” the man told him. “People like you are just like drug dealers to me.”

Afterwards, Kang was prevented from sleeping and subjected to repeated questions and insults. The investigators were frustrated. “We want to go home,” they told him. “Can you just confess so we can get this over with?” The NFS came out with another analysis concluding that Kang had written the note for Kim. On July 13 of that year, Kang was indicted for assisting a suicide.

He was still naive in those days. He thought any reasonable court would immediately set him free. But none of the judges in the first three trials believed him. In July 1992, the Supreme Court upheld his three-year prison sentence. A copy of the ruling was delivered to his cell at Daejeon Prison through the food tray slot. Kang read it, then hurled it across the room.

After his three years in prison, Kang resigned himself to his fate. Before his eyes was the overwhelming power of the state, and the guilty verdict haunted him wherever he went. When he heard that people preparing for the bar exam read the Supreme Court’s decision in his case as an example of assisting suicide, he felt sick at heart. An old man who recognized Kang on a bus cursed him, saying that people like him ought to die. People that he met at his job would ask him why he wrote the suicide note with curiosity in their eyes. Of course, it was not just painful for Kang, but also for his family and friends.

While living this nightmare, it was civic society that reached out to Kang. The Action Committee for Revealing the Truth about the Case of Kang Ki-hoon Being Framed for Writing a Suicide Note was set up in March 2005. New notebooks and journals were discovered at the National Deliberation Body for University Student Representatives that could be used to verify Kim Ki-sul’s handwriting.

After appraisals by the National Forensic Service and private companies, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee announced in 2007 that the suicide note was written by Kim Ki-sul and recommended that the government issue an apology and hold a retrial.

In Sep. 2009, Seoul High Court decided to initiate a retrial. But because of opposition from prosecutors, three more years went by. It was not until Oct. 2012 that the Supreme Court rejected the final appeal by the prosecutors and confirmed that the case would be retried.

And then, after another year of fierce debate in the courtroom, the court found Kang not guilty on Thursday. This was the moment when the curtain finally fell on the history of the government fabricating evidence to combat the democratization movement. But for Kang, who is wounded in spirit and weary from a battle with cancer, the not guilty verdict was too little, too late.

When asked how it felt to be found not guilty after 23 years, Kang paused. For that brief moment, did the years of bitterness pass before his eyes? “I’m not sure what to say,” Kang said. “I still clearly remember how I felt when the judge read the guilty verdict.”

The civic group that supported Kang hung a banner at the press conference that read, “The truth is victorious,” but the mood at the event was subdued, without exclamations or cheers.

When a Hankyoreh reporter met Kang in front of the courtroom at 3 pm on Thursday right after the not guilty verdict was read, he said, “This verdict should become an opportunity for healing for the entire Korean people. This trial is no longer my trial. This is not about my personal misfortune anymore; it belongs to all Koreans who have followed the case since 1991, the people who dedicated themselves to the cause of democratization, and everyone close to me who felt even more pain than I did.”

Kang also mentioned that the court did not offer any expression of regret. He had been hoping that the court’s decision would include some contrition and regret for past judicial mistakes, but the judges read through the verdict quickly and without emotion.

“This is a good opportunity for the courts and the prosecutors to reflect on the mistakes they made in the past,” Kang said. “In fact, it is when the judicial system admits its past mistakes that its authority becomes stronger.”

“It took a long time, but the truth finally came out,” said Lee Seok-tae, the defense attorney who worked hard to have his client exonerated. “Since the morality of Korean society has been confirmed anew, we should all congratulate each other and pat each other on the back.”

Ham Se-ung, a priest who also participated in the press conference, stressed that the next thing to do is to reform the prosecutors. “We should take this verdict as an opportunity to start reforming the prosecutors,” Ham said. “Many public security cases were led by other state institutions, but this case was different because the prosecutors took the lead. This should be a signal for change in the prosecutors.”

 

 Kang Ki-hoon leaves Seoul High Court in Seocho district after being found innocent of ghostwriting a suicide note
Kang Ki-hoon leaves Seoul High Court in Seocho district after being found innocent of ghostwriting a suicide note
Kang wants expressions of regret from the judge and prosecutors

 

When asked to share his feelings about the prosecutors, Kang - the central figure in the case - said, “It would take a long time to tell everything. I would like all of the prosecutors involved in this case, whatever that involvement may have entailed, to express their regret.”

He said that while being cleared of guilt was important, what he really wanted was to hear the voice of the prosecutors who had illegally investigated him. “In reality, the citizens who cursed at me back then and the experts who made an incorrect evaluation of the handwriting were also victims of the prosecutors,” Kang said.

During the press conference, the Civic Gathering for Exonerating and Clearing the Name of Kang Ki-hoon urged the prosecutors, the main culprits in fabricating crimes for political ends, to accept the verdict and to not appeal the case.

 

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