A court has ordered the state to pay 100 million won (US$757,747) in compensation to a man incarcerated from 1980-81 for distributing leaflets criticizing then military ruler Chun Doo-hwan for his brutal crackdown on a democratization uprising, sources said Thursday.
The Seoul Central District Court recently delivered the ruling in a compensation suit filed by Lee Woo-bong, 61, and his family members against the state. The court ordered compensation of 49 million won for Lee and the remainder for Lee's father and siblings.
Upon the outbreak of the democracy uprising in the city of Gwangju, 267 kilometers south of Seoul, in May 1980, Lee, then a high school student, and his schoolmates had planned a schoolwide rally, but the plan had been blocked by military forces.
In the following two months, Lee distributed leaflets in the nearby city of Jeonju, criticizing Chun and his military regime's crackdown.
Chun, who served as president from 1980-88 after seizing power in a 1979 military coup, is widely criticized for ordering troops to use force to put down the pro-democracy uprising that left hundreds of people dead.
Lee was arrested on charges of violating martial law, given a nine-month prison term and spent 266 days in incarceration. He was released upon an appellate court's sentence of a suspended jail term in April 1981.
Lee was finally found innocent by the Seoul High Court in 2021, which revisited the case at his request.
"Public officials enforced the plaintiff's arrest and incarceration without the due procedures defined by the Constitution and the criminal procedure law in accordance with martial law that is clearly unconstitutional and ineffective," the Seoul Central District Court said.
Source: Yonhap News Agency