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After losing an appeal in a lawsuit asking the government to pay damages for convicting her of violating Emergency Measure No. 9, feminist Go-eun Gwang-soon, 60, appealed to the Supreme Court, lowering the amount of money she is requesting to 1 won (the smallest unit of Korean currency, less than one cent).

With courts moving backward in their rulings on paying damages for past government actions, Go-eun wants to force the Supreme Court to rule that the investigations carried out and judgments made according to the emergency measures were illegal.

“In the past, the law did not fulfill its function, causing harm to innocent people. But even now, the Supreme Court is referring to the emergency measures as ‘sophisticated governing actions,’ which is a ludicrous failure to defend the values of the constitution,” Go-eun told a Hankyoreh reporter by phone on May 24 as she explained her reason for appealing.

“My request for one won is symbolic, since my objective is not to get money but rather to determine whether the judicial system is able to correct its own wrong decisions,” she said.

In 1977, Go-eun was found guilty of violating Emergency Measure No. 9 because she had instructed her junior classmates at university to get some black ribbon to use in a demonstration. She was sentenced to a one-year prison term, which was suspended for two years, and her license to practice oriental medicine was also suspended for one year.

After the Supreme Court ruled in Apr. 2013 that Emergency Measure No. 9 was invalid and unconstitutional, Go-eun filed for a retrial in June of the same year and was exonerated that October. After that, she sued the government for damages, claiming that she had been arrested without a warrant and subjected to cruel treatment, including water torture.

The lower court found that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that such torture had occurred. However, it concluded that Go-eun’s arrest and judgment had been an illegal exercise of authority since they were based on an unconstitutional emergency measure and ordered the government to pay Go-eun around 120 million won (US$109,400) in damages.

But in Oct. 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that arrests and judgments based on the emergency measures were not an illegal exercise of authority per se, declaring that an individual may only be compensated for damages when agents of the state committed acts such as torture that were clearly illegal and when the conviction of the individual was related to those acts.

This prompted criticism that the Supreme Court’s concern about the government and conservative media’s opposition with paying damages for past government actions had led it to go back on its own position on the unconstitutionality of the emergency measures. The fact that the emergency measures had been instituted by none other than former president Park Chung-hee, father of current president Park Geun-hye, was also cited as a possible factor.

After this, lower courts used the same logic in a series of decisions in which they rejected lawsuits for damages filed by victims of the emergency measures, and Go-eun lost her appeal, too.

“We are planning to emphasize the fact that former president Park Chung-hee’s implementation of the emergency measures was not the only illegal act, but that all the investigations, arrests, and judgments carried out by government employees were illegal. We will also fight to force the court to recognize that Go-eun was forced to make a false testimony under torture,” said Seol Chang-il, the lawyer representing Go-eun.

By Lee Kyung-mi, staff reporter

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