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.
On this day..
- 1892: Louis Anastay, "I wish to mount the scaffold"
- 1858: Alexander Anderson and Henry Richards
- 1836: Two English poisoners
- Feast Day of St. Eupsychius, anti-Apostate
- 1859: John Stoefel, the first hanged in Denver
- 1980: Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr's father-in-law
- 1812: Jose Antonio Aponte, Cuban revolutionary
- 1912: Tom Miles lynched
- 1945: Johann Georg Elser, dogged assassin
- 1868: The native prisoners of Emperor Tewodros II
- 1747: Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat
- 1740: Charles Drew, parricide