Teacher branded North Korean spy acquitted 54 years later

A high school teacher branded a North Korean spy in 1972 was posthumously acquitted Wednesday after a court ruled that the evidence used to convict him had been obtained illegally.

The Seoul High Court found the late Seong Gi-ho not guilty of violating the National Security Act and the now-defunct Anti-Communism Act. He had been convicted of failing to report information connected to North Korean espionage.

Seong had maintained that investigators from the Army Security Command, the predecessor of today’s Defense Counterintelligence Command, forced him to make false confessions through torture, threats and prolonged detention.

Official investigation records stated that Seong voluntarily accompanied officers from his home in Busan to Seoul on March 22, 1972. The court, however, found the account implausible.

School records showed that Seong had already been removed from his teaching post on March 17, five days before investigators claimed to have first taken him in.

“Considering that the defendant was removed from his post on March 17, 1972, it is highly likely that he had already been illegally detained by the Army Security Command before March 22,” the court said.

The records also indicated that Seong traveled from Busan to Seoul and completed two handwritten statements and a formal interrogation record on the same day, a timeline the court found difficult to accept.

“It is reasonable to conclude that investigators arrested and confined the defendant without a warrant,” the court said.

The court ruled that statements obtained during his unlawful detention were inadmissible, leaving insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction.

Prosecutors also acknowledged during the retrial proceedings that Seong appeared to have been detained illegally for at least five days and agreed that the retrial should proceed.

Seong was teaching history at a high school in Busan when he was taken into custody during a military intelligence investigation into an alleged North Korean spy network.

A lower court convicted Seong on Sept. 13, 1972, and sentenced him to 18 months in prison. An appeals court maintained the conviction but suspended the prison term for five years.

The Supreme Court dismissed his final appeal on April 24, 1973, making the conviction final. Seong was dismissed from his teaching position that same day and later lost his pension, while he and his family lived under the stigma of being labeled pro-North Korean.

Seong died on Sept. 13, 1994, at age 56 without seeing his name cleared.

His family continued seeking to overturn his conviction, and the court granted a retrial earlier this year.