hankyoreh

People who were illegally detained and tortured in connection with the Jeju Uprising of 1948-49 hold a press conference regarding their retrial on Mar. 19 in front of the Jeju District Court. (Kim Min-kyoung

Retrials are to be held for 18 people sentenced to prison time in a court-martial after suffering illegal detention and torture during the Jeju Uprising of 1948–49. This marks the first-ever decision to begin retrials in criminal court in connection with the uprising.

“Almost no evidence has been found of arrest warrants for the retrial petitioners, some of whom were incarcerated in excess of 40 days or suffered harsh treatment such as physical abuse and torture during their questions,” the second criminal division of Jeju District Court (under judge Jegal Chang) said on Sept. 3 in announcing its decision to hold the retrials.

“As illegal detention and acts of violence were in violation of provisions in the Founding Constitution and the former Criminal Procedure Act at the time, grounds for retrial do exist,” the court concluded. The illegal detention and/or torture of government employees are viewed as representing grounds for retrial.

The key question in the case is the existence of final guilty rulings, which are a prerequisite for retrial. The Jeju Uprising prisoners were incarcerated in detention centers all around South Korea after being sentenced to prison time on charges of rebellion and espionage by two general courts-martial in Jeju in Dec. 1948 and July 1949 – but no surviving rulings or trial records have been found to exist. The only major record that has survived are in the form of a prisoner register, which records the name, domicile of origin, ruling, sentencing date, and place of incarcerate for 2,530 individuals.

Concluding that the prisoner register details were consistent with the petitioners’ statements, the court acknowledged the existence of a “final guilty ruling” – indicating that the failure to submit a written guilty verdict would not pose any issues for the retrial request.

“According to the prisoner register, the retrial petitioners were tried by a court-martial, which was in the position of exercising jurisdiction at the time,” the court said.

“The sentences, sentencing dates, and places of incarceration listed for the petitioners’ on the prisoner register were for the most part consistent with their statements,” it added.

The court also attached significance to “military enforcement directives” for two additional petitioners located during the trial process, 88-year-old Oh Young-jong and 93-year-old Hyun Woo-ryong.

“These directives would have not been drafted without the existence of some form of ruling by the law of the time against the corresponding retrial petitioners,” the court said.

Based on the various factors, the court concluded, “Regardless of whether the procedures of indictment, trial date selection, and sentencing for the retrial petitioners took place in a lawful manner, their transport to the mainland and incarceration in detention centers must be seen as having been made in the court-martial’s decision.”

In Apr. 2017, surviving former prisoners incarcerated at detention centers in Jeonju (eight), Incheon (seven), Daegu (two), and Mapo (one) at the time of the Jeju Uprising requested retrials after seven decades, asking for a “judicial ruling on acts of human rights infringement.”

By Kim Min-kyoung, staff reporter

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