Latest news with #BusanDistrictCourt
Korea Herald
08-04-2025
- Korea Herald
Convicted sex offender commits another sex crime
A man who served six years in prison for sexually assaulting a female student at a university dorm in 2013 was put on trial for another crime, this time for taking nude photos of a woman and blackmailing her family. The defendant is accused of intimidation or compulsion by using photograph, etc., stipulated in Article 14-3 of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes. He is currently in detention and is to be tried by the Busan District Court. The defendant is accused of filming and distributing in 2022 nude photos of his female acquaintance, while using the illegal content to blackmail the victim's family. It was found that the defendant is a repeat sex criminal, having been sentenced to six years in prison, 120 hours of treatment for sexual violence and public release of his personal information for six years in 2014. These punishments were for his 2013 attack on the university student, in which he broke into the university's dormitory at around 2:20 a.m. on Aug. 30, beating and sexually assaulting the victim.
Korea Herald
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Korea Herald
Exonerated ex-teacher to be compensated for jail time
A 70-year-old former teacher who was recently exonerated of his anti-state charges will receive compensation for being wrongly imprisoned for two years, according to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. The Busan District Court on Feb. 25 ruled that the state should give Lee Tae-yeong 291.4 million won ($200,000) for the damages inflicted by his time behind bars in the 1980s. The initial sentence was handed down in 1980 when then-high school teacher Lee was serving his mandatory military duty in Busan. In March of 1980, Lee was arrested by the military authorities for violating the now-defunct anti-communism act and was sentenced to two years in jail. He was accused of speaking in favor of North Korea's totalitarian regime during his college days, saying then-North Korean leader Kim Il-sung is "no different than (former South Korean President) Park Chung-hee in terms of long-term ruling." Park was officially president of South Korea for 16 years but maintained dictatorial rule over the country for effectively 18 years after taking power in a 1961 military coup. His revision of the Constitution allowed presidents to run for unlimited terms and abolished direct presidential elections. Lee had also said the anti-communism act, which the Park administration had enacted in 1961 after the coup, was repressive toward the people and must be abolished. The act was eventually abolished in December 1980, due to most of its content overlapping with the National Security Act. After Lee's release in 1982, the education authorities in South Gyeongsang Province subjected him to a disciplinary committee and took away his teaching license. He was banned from leaving the Busan area while on parole until 1990. Lee was reinstated as a high school teacher in 1999, and retired in 2018. The state-commissioned Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated Lee's case last year upon his request. It found that he had been illegally detained and probed in the 1980 investigation, a process that included torture and physical assault. He requested a retrial based on the findings in October and was found not guilty by Busan District Court in December. "The defendant's testimonies are not to be used as evidence, since it can be said that he had been illegally detained without a warrant on March 8, 1980, and had been subject to brutality since. ... Even if he had praised Kim Il-sung, it cannot be said that (the comment) represents a clear danger to the safety and existence of the state," the court said.
Korea Herald
13-02-2025
- Korea Herald
Woman punished for biting off tongue of attempted rapist to get retrial 60 years later
A 78-year-old woman who received a suspended prison sentence for fighting off an attempted rapist will have another chance at justice, as a Busan court said Thursday it has decided to hold a retrial for her case that was sentenced 60 years ago. The Busan High Court accepted Choi Mal-ja's appeal against its earlier decision not to hold a retrial on the case. Choi had initially requested a retrial with the Busan District Court -- which originally sentenced her to a suspended prison term in 1965 -- but the court declined, saying there was no clear evidence to prove her innocence. The Busan High Court upheld the earlier decision, but Choi took the case to the Supreme Court, which in December 2024 ordered the appellate court to review the case once more. South Korea's highest court noted a high possibility that Choi had been subject to illegal detention during her investigation between 1964 and 1965. "The testimony (of Choi) is specific and consistent. ... The court cannot find unnatural or unreasonable parts in (Choi's) motivations to request a retrial," the high court said. "There is enough grounds to believe that there had been unlawful arrest and detention without warrant, as dictated by the Criminal Procedure Act." On May 6, 1964, the then 18-year-old Choi was attacked by a 21-year-old man surnamed Noh, who tried to rape her near her home. In the process, Choi bit off 1.5 centimeters of her attacker's tongue. Choi claimed self-defense against the attack, but the court found her guilty of violating Article 258 of the Criminal Act, aggravated bodily injury on another. She was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years, while her attacker was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for two years. "I said I did nothing wrong, and (the prosecutor) said if I didn't comply, I would have to spend the rest of my life in jail," Choi said in a 2020 interview with The Korea Herald. She said the prosecutor accused her of refusing to take responsibility for crippling a man, and even attempted to coerce her into marrying the attacker, which she did not. Choi later found out that her father had used the bulk of the family's savings for a settlement with Noh to win leniency for her punishment. Choi said Noh continued to harass her family, even breaking into their home and threatening her and her older sister with a knife. A May 20, 1973, story in the now-defunct Sunday Seoul magazine confirms Choi's claim about the court trying to pair her up with Noh, saying the judge "persuaded the two families by saying, '(The victim) is already damaged, so it would be better for the two to be paired up and live happily.'" Choi restarted her education in the 2000s, enrolling in Korea National Open University in 2013. In pursuing her education, Choi said she realized the extent of her the injustice she suffered, which motivated her to fight to reopen her case with assistance from Korea Woman's Hotline, a local group that supports victims of sexual violence.
