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The offices of the MBC TV station in Gwangju can be seen burning during the popular uprising of May 18, 1980. (provided by the May 18 Memorial Foundation)

A Gwangju resident who set fire to the local branch office of the MBC TV network during the events of May 1980 was posthumously acquitted in a retrial 41 years after the fact.

On Sunday, judge Lee Seung-cheol of the Gwangju High Court’s first criminal division announced, “In the retrial of Choi [first name redacted], who was sentenced to a minimum of two-and-a-half years and a maximum of three years in prison on charges of violating martial law and arson against a currently inhabited building during the events of May 1980, the original court decision was reversed and a sentence of one year and six months in prison was imposed.”

Choi, who was 18 at the time, died in 2009.

The court acquitted Choi on the charges of violating martial law and committing arson against a currently inhabited building, concluding that their action was a “legitimate attempt to uphold the order of constitutional government.”

But additional joint injury charges over theft of a tape recorder and bicycle in October 1979 and assault against a fellow citizen in October 1980 were upheld, resulting in the reduced sentence.

“While the fact that Choi committed arson has been recognized based on past trial records, a consideration of the time of occurrence, motive, aim, object, means, and outcome of the act showed that it was not a crime, as it corresponded to an act intended to stop or oppose the crime of destruction of the constitutional order,” the court said.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that actions committed between the declaration of emergency martial law following the military coup d’etat by Chun Doo-hwan et al. on Dec. 12, 1979, and the lifting of emergency martial law in January 1981 were an insurrection destructive to the constitutional order, and actions to prevention that were thus legitimate in terms of criminal law,” it explained.

The court also noted that another individual surnamed Park who had been named as an accomplice had been “acquitted along these lines in a 1998 retrial.”

At 9:30 pm on May 18, 1980, Choi was taking part in a demonstration in front of the Gwangju branch of MBC in the Gung neighborhood of Gwangju’s Dong (East) District protesting the network’s failure to broadcast footage of demonstrations.

Demonstrators at the time declared that the network’s building should be “set on fire.” Choi, Park and one another individual were indicted for going into the building and starting a fire at the time.

A general court-martial under the Combat Arms Training Command, which was the martial law branch for the North and South Jeolla region, sentenced Choi to a minimum of three years and a maximum of five years in prison in April 1981.

That sentence was reduced to two-and-a-half to three years on appeal, which was finalized after Choi abandoned additional appeals.

Prosecutors requested a retrial on May 15 of last year. The court decided to proceed with a retrial after concluding that the case met the retrial grounds specified in the Special Act on the May 18 Democratization Movement.

By Ahn Kwan-ok, Gwangju correspondent

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