South Korean man s wrongful spy charges overturned 58 years after execution

SEOUL - A man executed after wrongfully being convicted of spying for North Korea has been posthumously exonerated by a South Korean court, in a retrial held over half a century after his death.

Court officials said on June 25 that the Supreme Court confirmed a lower court’s not-guilty verdict for the late Oh Gyeong-mu, who was convicted of violating the National Security Act and now-defunct Anti-Communism Act in 1967.

A separate retrial in the 2020s also cleared the charges against the younger brother and sister of the deceased.

The Oh brothers were lured into North Korea in 1966 by their eldest brother, Mr Oh Gyeong-ji, where they were held for 40 days and subjected to ideological education by the Pyongyang regime. Upon returning to the South, both voluntarily turned themselves in to the authorities.

However, prosecutors accused them of acting as North Korean spies, and the court ultimately convicted them on espionage charges.

“It cannot be considered that a legally-valid investigation was conducted on the accused, and their confession of crime can be seen as unlawfully acquired evidence through cruelty such as illegal arrest,” the 2023 ruling by Seoul Central District Court said, dismissing the confession as an evidence of crime.

“The court would like to offer its deepest condolences to the brutality imposed on the (Oh) family, due to their actions conducted out of love of their family,” it added.

The prosecution challenged the decision, but both the appellate and the nation’s highest court upheld the earlier ruling. The appellate court said Mr Oh Gyeong-mu meeting his older brother was to suggest he turn himself in, due to concern of their mother, and said there was no reason to believe he had any intent of helping the North.

Brotherly love led to death and imprisonment

Mr Oh Gyeong-dae,