South Korean version of the Dreyfus affair finally solved after 24 years

Posted on : 2015-05-15 17:33 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Kang Ki-hoon has been exonerated after being accused of ghostwriting a suicide note
 Father Ham Sae-woong (center) and New Politics Alliance for Democracy senior advisor Lee Boo-young (left) talk in front of the Supreme Court in Seoul’s Seocho district after Kang Ki-hoon was exonerated in the suicide note ghostwriting case
Father Ham Sae-woong (center) and New Politics Alliance for Democracy senior advisor Lee Boo-young (left) talk in front of the Supreme Court in Seoul’s Seocho district after Kang Ki-hoon was exonerated in the suicide note ghostwriting case

The suicide note ghostwriting case of Kang Ki-hoon has been called a South Korean version of the Dreyfus affair.

Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish descent who was framed as a spy at the end of the 19th century because his handwriting was similar to that of the real culprit. After a legal struggle that lasted 12 years, he was finally exonerated.

Handwriting was also the crux of Kang Ki-hoon’s case, but it took him 24 years - twice as long as Dreyfus - for his name to be cleared.

When Kim Ki-sul, social affairs director for the National Democratic Movement Union, committed suicide by setting himself on fire in May 1991, the violent crimes division at the Seoul office of the prosecutors (led at the time by Kang Shin-wook) opened an investigation of Kang Ki-hoon, a colleague of Kim Ki-sul’s, on the suspicion that Kang had ghostwritten Kim’s suicide note.

After analyzing the suicide note along with samples of Kim and Kang’s handwriting, the National Forensic Service (NFS) concluded that the letter was different from Kim’s normal handwriting and similar to Kang’s. This proved to be the conclusive evidence in Kang‘s prosecution.

During the second trial, Kim Hyeong-yeong, chief of document analysis for the NFS and the person who had assessed the suicide note, was arrested on charges of accepting bribes in connection with another case. This prompted claims that Kim had falsified his assessment of the handwriting, but the prosecutors and the court ignored them. That year, the Supreme Court upheld Kang’s conviction and sentenced him to three years in prison, suspending his license for one year and six months.

But an opportunity to reveal the truth came in 2005, when an individual surnamed Han, a friend of Kim Ki-sul‘s, provided the historical fact-finding committee at the National Police Agency with notebooks and journals that Kim had written for the National Council of University Student Representatives, or Jeondaehyeop in Korean.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission launched a fresh investigation and learned that the handwriting assessment had followed the line indicated by the prosecutors and that Kim Hyeong-yeong had falsely claimed that several people had assessed the handwriting when he had actually done it by himself.

It was only then that the NFS concluded that the handwriting on the suicide note was the same as that in the Jeondaehyeop notebooks and different from Kang’s. Based on this, the historical fact-finding committee decided to reopen Kang’s case.

This gave Kang grounds to request a retrial in 2008. One year and eight months later, Seoul High Court granted Kang’s request, concluding that substantial evidence had been found to exonerate Kang. The prosecutors appealed, raising the possibility that the Jeondaehyeop notebooks had been forged. The Supreme Court ordered a retrial, while instructing the court not to hold itself to the decision of the historical fact-finding committee for various reasons, including doubts about the provenance of the Jeondaehyeop notebooks.

As a result, a considerable amount of the retrial was spent determining the authenticity of the Jeondaehyeop notebooks. The court decided to compare the notebooks with other handwriting samples to confirm whether Kim Ki-sul had actually written them. But the National Archives of Korea said that it could not provide the original suicide note, and the NFS was reluctant to compare the suicide note with Kim’s writing samples, because the former was written in a hasty scribble while the other samples were written neatly and legibly.

In the end, the court seized Kim’s resume and letters and submitted these along with the Jeondaehyeop notebooks to the NFS for assessment. The NFS concluded that it was possible that the handwriting was the same.

In Feb. 2014, the court found that Kang was not guilty. “The assessment made by the National Forensic Service in 1991 is not reliable, and the rest of the evidence submitted by the prosecutors is not sufficient to conclude that the charges have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” the court said.

Nevertheless, the prosecutors appealed, unwilling to back down. On May 14, a year and two months later, the Supreme Court concluded the case in a four-page decision. The decision of the Supreme Court itself in regard to the case of Kang, whose name had been tarnished for 24 years, was only a few lines long. “The decision of the lower court, described above, was appropriate,” the country‘s highest court said.

The 50 or so acquaintances of Kang who were sitting in the audience filed out of the courtroom quietly without saying much. When a reporter asked one individual for an opinion, he simply smiled.

As it turned out, the person whose name had finally been cleared after two decades was not even in the courtroom. Kang had a recent operation for liver cancer and is in poor health. Reportedly, he is receiving medical treatment at the moment and is not even in touch with his friends.

 May 14. They attended the hearing to support Kang in his 24-year legal struggle. (by Lee Jeong-a
May 14. They attended the hearing to support Kang in his 24-year legal struggle. (by Lee Jeong-a

 

By Lee Kyung-mi, staff reporter

 

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

button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)

Related stories