Overview
The Burim Incident (釜林事件) was a case in which students, teachers, and office workers involved in a social science reading group, a night school, and a book cooperative in Busan in autumn 1981 were arrested without warrants, held illegally for extended periods and tortured at the Anti-Communist Investigation Office, and then punished for violating the National Security Act, the Martial Law Act, and the Act on Assembly and Demonstration. It was named "Busan's Haklim" after the Haklim Incident, which broke out in Seoul the same year. It was the largest public security case in the Busan area and is also known as the case that led the defense attorney Roh Moo-hyun to embark on a path as a human rights lawyer. The victims were acquitted in a retrial in 2014.
Background
After the nationwide expansion of martial law in May 1980 and the suppression of Gwangju, the New Military faction cracked down hard on the student movement and opposition forces outside the establishment. When student demonstrations took place at Pusan National University in April and June 1981, the police named Lee Ho-chul (later Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs in the Blue House) as their instigator, but because he went into hiding, the investigation stalled for some time. Then, when connections with Busan figures were raised during the investigation of the Jeonminhakryeon and Jeonminnoryeon groups (the Haklim Incident) in Seoul, the public security authorities began arresting in large numbers people involved in the democratization movement in the Busan area, including those who had been detained and released after the Busan–Masan Democratic Uprising of 1979 and officials of the book cooperative (Kyunghyang Shinmun, 2004 feature article).
Course of Events
The arrests began in earnest around September 1981 (some victims recall being detained earlier). According to victims' testimony reported when the film The Attorney was released and according to the 2014 retrial ruling, those arrested were taken without warrants to the Anti-Communist Investigation Office, where they were questioned in isolation from the outside world for periods ranging from 20 days to as long as 63 days. They stated that they were beaten and subjected to abuse including so-called "chicken roasting" and water torture. The charges treated the joint reading of history and social science books such as What Is History? and The Logic of a Transitional Era as praise for and incitement of an anti-state organization, and classified gatherings such as drinking parties, year-end parties, and visits to a friend's business opening as "gatherings likely to seriously cause social unrest." The number of people detained varies between 19 and 22 depending on the report.
The investigation was directed by Choi Byung-guk, the head of public security at the Busan District Prosecutors' Office at the time, and prosecutor Ko Young-joo and others participated in it. The prosecution sought sentences of three to ten years in prison for the defendants.
Trial
The defense was handled free of charge by Roh Moo-hyun, Kim Kwang-il, and other lawyers. Roh later recalled that he was shocked to see signs of torture during visits with the defendants, and this experience led to his subsequent defense work on human rights and labor and his participation in the democratization movement. In the first trial (Busan District Court), the defendants were found guilty in 1982, and the sentences are reported as one to seven years in prison, or up to six to seven years depending on the source. In the appeal (a collegiate panel of the Busan District Court), some charges were judged not guilty, but the main framework of guilt was maintained, and the sentences were finalized by the Supreme Court in 1983. Among those indicted in the so-called third round of charges in the same case, the single-judge first-instance panel (Judge Seo Seok-gu) ruled that Lee Ho-chul was not guilty of violating the National Security Act and found him guilty only of other charges. The detainees were released in December 1983 through suspension of execution of sentence, and were pardoned and had their civil rights restored in 1988.
Investigation of the Truth and Retrial
- 1999: The victims filed for a retrial, but it was dismissed.
- August 2009: In a retrial based on the Special Act on the May 18 Democratization Movement and Others (Moneytoday notes that the Supreme Court made its decision after a re-appeal in 2006), the Busan District Court acquitted the defendants of violating the Martial Law Act and granted exemption from prosecution for violating provisions of the Act on Assembly and Demonstration that had already been abolished or revised. However, the parts concerning the National Security Act and the Anti-Communism Act remained, as no grounds for retrial were recognized for them.
- August 2012: Five people, including Ko Ho-seok, No Jae-yeol, Seol Dong-il, Lee Jin-geol, and Choi Jun-young, filed for a retrial that included the National Security Act portion.
- 6 March 2013: The Second Criminal Division of the Busan District Court (Presiding Judge Han Young-pyo) decided to commence the retrial, stating that the fact that the defendants had been detained without warrants for at least 20 days had been proven and that the investigators' unlawful arrest and confinement were therefore recognized.
- 13 February 2014: The same panel (Criminal Appeals Division 2) acquitted all five defendants. The reasons were that confessions made during prolonged illegal detention could be suspected of being involuntary and therefore lacked evidentiary value, and that the defendants' conduct could not be considered to have threatened the existence or security of the state. The portion concerning the Act on Assembly and Demonstration was exempted from prosecution. This was the first time a person related to the Burim Incident had been acquitted of violating the National Security Act.
- 25 September 2014: The Supreme Court's Second Division (Presiding Justice Kim Chang-seok) dismissed the prosecution's appeal, and the acquittals were finalized. It was 33 years after the incident.
- July 2016: The Busan District Court ordered the state to pay Lee Ho-chul about 370 million won in compensation.
Impact and Significance
The Burim Incident is cited as a representative example of the New Military regime using the National Security Act as a tool of regime security. Along with the Haklim Incident, the Osong Club Incident, and the Aram Club Incident, it is one of the public security cases that occurred in succession across the country in 1981–1982. A considerable number of the victims, after their release from prison, were at the center of the democratization movement in the Busan area, including the founding of the Busan Democratic Citizens' Council in 1985 and the June Democratic Struggle of 1987. The film The Attorney, released in December 2013, took this incident and Roh Moo-hyun's defense as its subject, which brought the case back to wide public attention, and the retrial acquittal also drew great interest. However, some elements of the film, such as the son of the soup-and-rice restaurant owner, are dramatizations rather than fact.
Disputes and Controversies
- Nature of the case: The victims, democratization organizations, and the retrial court regard the reading group as a public security case fabricated through torture. By contrast, Ko Young-joo, who was the investigating prosecutor at the time, repeatedly asserted in a 2014 press interview and elsewhere that "the Burim Incident was not a democratization movement but a communist movement," and former lawmaker Choi Byung-guk was reported to have said that he had no intention of apologizing and that the claims of torture were the victims' self-glorification (Weekly Kyunghyang, 2014). The statement by Lee Sang-rok (a victim identified as the ringleader), which Ko cited as evidence of communist leanings, is a claim that cannot be verified because Lee has already died, and Lee was not included among the retrial applicants (Pressian, 2014).
- Judge Seo Seok-gu: Seo, who drew attention for acquitting the defendants of violating the National Security Act in the single-judge first-instance trial, later turned to activities in conservative groups and criticized the film The Attorney.
- Number of people and dates: The number of people arrested and detained (19 to 22), the timing of the arrests (July to September 1981), and the sentences at the original trial are recorded differently in different sources.
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