Overview
The Aram Association Incident was a case in which, in 1981, the public security authorities of the Chun Doo-hwan government charged teachers, active-duty police officers and soldiers, prosecutorial office staff, Saemaul Geumgo (community credit union) employees, and university students as members of "Aram Association," an anti-state organization allegedly plotting to overthrow the state. The name "Aram Association" derived from the fact that the last gathering of those involved was the hundred-day celebration on May 17, 1981, for Aram, the daughter of Captain Kim Nan-su. Most of those involved were from Geumsan, South Chungcheong Province, and were alumni or seniors and juniors of Geumsan High School. The Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) concluded that the case was one in which people were punished on the basis of false confessions obtained through torture, and an appellate retrial at the Seoul High Court in 2009 handed down acquittals.
Background
Those involved were people from the same region who had criticized the Yushin system and military rule. After 1980, they copied and circulated leaflets issued in the name of the Chosun University student council that informed people about the reality of the suppression of the May 18 Gwangju Uprising, as well as the "Seoul National University Anti-Fascist Fellow Students' Struggle Declaration," and in 1980, during the "Seoul Spring," they visited Kim Dae-jung after he was released from house arrest. The victims say they were not organized as a group in any formal sense and were merely "people who knew each other casually" (Weekly Kyunghyang 2009).
Course of Events
The trigger was that Hwangbo Yun-sik, a high school history teacher, said during class that responsibility for the Gwangju incident lay with Chun Doo-hwan. The accounts of the students who heard this were passed through another teacher and reported to the police, and the information was transmitted to the Police Headquarters Security Bureau and the Agency for National Security Planning. On July 16, 1981, Hwangbo Yun-sik was taken from school by men who did not disclose their identities and was interrogated for 32 days at the Counter-Intelligence Division of the South Chungcheong Provincial Police Agency. Others were successively taken without warrants: teacher Jeong Hae-suk was arrested at a tearoom in Geumsan-eup, and Saemaul Geumgo employee Lee Jae-gwon (some reports say Lee Jae-gon) was seized at an inn in Daejeon, while Captain Kim Nan-su was interrogated by a security unit. The victims stated that they were subjected to water torture and beatings. It is reported that during the investigation, a different name for the organization was initially mentioned, but near the end of the investigation it was settled as "Aram Association." Student "informants" were also confined in inns and made to rehearse their statements, and there is testimony that a student who retracted his statement in court was again unlawfully detained (Weekly Kyunghyang 2009).
Trials
- First trial (February 1982, Daejeon District Court): All the charges in the indictment were accepted, and guilty verdicts were handed down. The heaviest sentence was ten years' imprisonment. Lee In-je, who served as an associate judge and later became a National Assembly member, stated during a presidential candidate debate in 1997 that "I was a junior judge in no position to influence the outcome, but I share in the pain."
- Appellate trial (Seoul High Court): Ruling that for the "purpose of overthrowing the state" under the National Security Act to be recognized, there had to be a concrete plan for establishing a new government after overthrowing the existing one, the court acquitted on the charge of forming an anti-state organization and found guilty only on violations of the Anti-Communism Act and the Assembly and Demonstration Act, sentencing Park Hae-jeon to six years' imprisonment, among other sentences.
- Supreme Court appeal (October 19, 1982, Supreme Court): The Supreme Court overturned the lower court's ruling and remanded the case, holding that the defendants had determined the objective and methods of overthrowing the government and divided roles, and had formed a secret society disguised as a mutual savings club (gye).
- Remand trial and finalization: The Seoul High Court increased the sentences, imposing ten years' imprisonment on Park Hae-jeon, seven years on Hwangbo Yun-sik, and five years on Jeong Hae-suk, among others. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on June 22, 1983, and the sentences became final.
Investigation of the Truth and Retrial
In July 2007, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a determination of truth that the case was one in which false confessions were obtained through torture and people were punished accordingly, and recommended measures including a retrial. The commission pointed out that the first-instance court had relied on involuntary confessions and violated the principle of trial by evidence, and that the Supreme Court's reversal of the acquittal judgment and its leading to severe sentences constituted a betrayal of the judiciary's duty. At the retrial, one former investigator testified that he believed the investigation leadership had driven the investigation in that direction while knowing the group was not a subversive organization, and another investigator admitted to having struck the suspects' heads with a club. On May 21, 2009, the Seoul High Court recognized the illegal arrests and detention as well as the facts of torture, handed down acquittals, and stated, "On behalf of the senior judges, I convey words of apology and consolation." It was 28 years after the incident. Lee Jae-gwon, who suffered from the aftereffects of torture, died in 1998 without seeing the retrial acquittal.
Compensation
In the damages lawsuit filed by the victims and their families, the first trial ordered the state to pay 18.4 billion won, and on March 9, 2010, the Seoul High Court Civil Division 11 determined the amount to be about 20 billion won. Afterward, in 2011, the Supreme Court changed the starting point for calculating delay interest, significantly reducing the amount of compensation. In a separate lawsuit filed by the victims citing job loss and other damages, the Second Division of the Supreme Court dismissed the suit in early March 2015, holding that the victims had already received compensation related to the Gwangju Democratization Movement and that a "judicial settlement" had been established. The victims' groups strongly protested this ruling.
Impact and Significance
The Aram Association Incident is a symbolic example of the public security fabrications of the early 1980s, in which even private gatherings such as a hundred-day celebration were transformed into the formation of an anti-state organization. Amid reward practices such as a one-rank special promotion for police, the case is cited, along with the Burim Incident, the Ohsonghoe Incident, and the Hanul Association Incident, as a representative example of criticism that counter-subversion agencies competitively manufactured cases while prosecutors and courts condoned them. It also influenced the debate over past-affairs compensation as a representative case in which state compensation was limited after a retrial acquittal on grounds of the statute of limitations and receipt of compensation payments.
Disputes and Alternative Views
- Regarding the place name associated with the case, sources differ between Daejeon (the location of the investigation and trial) and Geumsan (the victims' hometown).
- In a 2009 telephone interview with the press, the prosecutor in charge at the time stated that he had never forced false confessions or assaulted anyone, and that he did not agree with the retrial verdict (Weekly Kyunghyang 2009).
References