The Supreme Court has ruled that the state must compensate victims who were wrongly imprisoned after being named as suspects in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. cultural center in Daegu under South Korea's military dictatorship. Some victims had been denied damages in the second civil trial because their retrials ended in dismissal rather than acquittal, but the top court recognized the state's liability, finding it highly probable that they would have been acquitted had there been no grounds for dismissal. It is the court's first ruling on damages claims stemming from the Daegu bombing, coming 43 years after the incident.
The Supreme Court's Third Division, with Justice Eom Sang-pil presiding, ruled on the 23rd in a damages suit filed against the state by four torture victims including Park Jong-deok and three surviving family members of the late Woo Seong-su. The court overturned the lower ruling, which had partially accepted only Park's claim, and sent the case back to the Seoul High Court.
In the Daegu incident, explosives in a bag left in front of the U.S. cultural center in Samdeok-dong, Daegu, detonated on Sept. 22, 1983, killing one person and injuring four. Park Jong-deok, Ham Jong-ho, Son Ho-man, Ahn Sang-hak and the late Woo Seong-su were named as suspects by investigative agencies, subjected to unlawful detention and abuse, and then indicted. Park was sent to trial on charges of violating the National Security Act, the Anti-Communist Act and the law on assemblies and demonstrations, while Ham and three others faced charges of violating the assembly law. In January 1984, the Daegu District Court found all the charges proven and sentenced Park to three years in prison and three years of suspension of civil rights, and Ham and the three others to one year and six months in prison.
In June 2010, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a partial finding of truth, determining that police had taken Park and numerous other civilians into custody without warrants while investigating the Daegu case, held them unlawfully for about a month, and assaulted the detained civilians and coerced statements from them during questioning. The victims petitioned for a retrial in 2013.
Retrial proceedings followed. On the assembly law charges applied to Park and the other victims, the court dismissed the charges, citing that the relevant provision of the assembly law — covering "assemblies or demonstrations that pose a risk of causing significant social unrest" — had been repealed in 1989 upon reconsideration. On Park's National Security Act charge, the court acquitted him on the grounds that the crime had not been proven. The retrial rulings became final as issued. In August 2020, Park and the other victims and surviving family members filed damages claims against the state over the guilty verdicts that had been finalized before the retrial.
The first and second trials ordered the state to pay 63 million won ($45,000) in damages to Park and his family alone. Liability was recognized only for the investigation, trial and enforcement of sentence related to the National Security Act and Anti-Communist Act charges on which Park was acquitted in the retrial.
The lower courts found that the state bore no liability toward Park and the others whose charges were dismissed, on the grounds that it had not been proven that they would probably have been acquitted had the charges not been dismissed.
The Supreme Court took a different view. It held that the state is liable because Park and the others would have been acquitted had there been no grounds for dismissal under the Criminal Procedure Act. "Where a dismissal becomes final in retrial proceedings because the penal provision applied to the defendant has been repealed, it cannot be said, absent other special circumstances, that the guilty verdict resulted from unlawful acts by state agencies during the investigation," the bench said.
"The mere fact that such a retrial dismissal has become final does not immediately establish that imprisonment under the guilty verdict constitutes an unlawful act by the state, and whether there is a causal link between the unlawful acts during the investigation and the guilty verdict must be examined and determined separately," the court said. "Taking the circumstances together, a causal link can be recognized where it has been proven with a high degree of probability that an acquittal would have been handed down had there been no grounds for dismissal."
The court also ruled that the short-term statute of limitations begins running from the date the dismissal became final. The reasoning is that even with a truth-finding determination by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission before the retrial proceedings, it would have been difficult to bring a damages suit against the state until the retrial case was decided. "It is difficult to expect an ordinary person to distinguish, before the finality of a guilty verdict is set aside through a retrial, between the harm suffered at the investigation stage and the harm suffered through imprisonment under the guilty verdict, and to exercise a right to claim damages against the state," the court said.
