1975: Eight South Korean pro-democracy activists
Add comment April 9th, 2008 Headsman
At dawn on this date in 1975, the South Korean dictatorship hanged eight pro-democracy activists, the day after the Korean Supreme Court had approved their spurious conviction as agents of the fictitious “People’s Revolutionary Party”.
The eight, Woo Hong-seon, Song Sang-jin, Seo Do-won, Ha Jae-wan, Lee Su-byeong, Kim Yong-won, Doh Ye-jong and Yeo Jeong-nam, were tortured by the Korean CIA into admitting affiliation with this organization supposedly collaborating with the Communist North.
They were among numerous opponents of South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee rounded up for protesting against the legal codification of outright dictatorship in the early 1970’s.
Early last year, a South Korean court officially ruled that they had been wrongly executed, and awarded their surviving family members $26 million.
According to the worldwide anti-death penalty organization Hands Off Cain, the death penalty remains on the books in South Korea but has not been employed for over a decade.
Possibly Related Executions
- 1950: Milada Horáková, democrat and feminist
- 1938: Seventeen former Bolshevik officials from the Trial of the 21
- 1966: Sayyid Qutb
Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Activists, Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Execution, Hanged, History, Intellectuals, Korea, Mass Executions, Notable Jurisprudence, Posthumous Exonerations, Power, Ripped from the Headlines, South Korea, Torture, Treason, Wrongful Executions
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