SEOUL, December 20 (AJP) -A South Korean court has fully acquitted Anglican Church of Korea priest Yoon Jung-hyeon, overturning his 1975 conviction under the now-abolished Anti-Communism Law after a retrial held nearly five decades later.
The Seoul Northern District Court ruled on Dec. 11, 202, that Yoon was not guilty, and the verdict became final last Friday.
The court said it could not rule out the possibility that coercive interrogation or mistreatment occurred during the unlawful detention period, and concluded that such procedural violations fatally undermined the reliability of the prosecution’s case.
The ruling further held that Yoon’s statements and activities did not satisfy the legal elements of an offense under the Anti-Communism Law, and that they did not pose a substantive threat to national security or the democratic constitutional order. The court rejected the prosecution’s case on grounds of insufficient evidence and flawed legal interpretation.
Yoon, who was convicted in 1975, filed for a retrial on Nov. 1, 2024, nearly 49 years after the original judgment. The court approved the retrial on April 4, 2025, citing Articles 420(7) and 422 of the Criminal Procedure Act, and held seven hearings between May and December before delivering the acquittal.
Prosecutors had already sought an acquittal during closing arguments on Nov. 26, and formally allowed the ruling to stand by foregoing an appeal.
The significance of the Yoon Jung-hyeon ruling lies not merely in the reversal of a guilty verdict, but in the court’s explicit judgment on the investigative practices of the authoritarian era.
The ruling also exposes the inherent limits of the Anti-Communism Law itself, which allowed punishment to extend beyond concrete acts to encompass thought, attitude, and interpretation. By affirming that Yoon’s words and conduct did not present a real threat to national security, the court reaffirmed a core constitutional principle: criminal law must address actual danger, not belief or conscience.
* This article, published by Aju Business Daily, was translated by AI and edited by AJP.
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