In September of last year, the first trial of the case of the ‘Self-reliant Unification Chungbuk Dong Branch’ case, in which the related persons were prosecuted, has been virtually in place for 1 year and 6 months. In this case, four members of labor circles in the Cheongju area, including Mr. Park, made contact with a North Korean spy overseas and formed an underground organization to engage in anti-state activities.
A lawyer said, “Usually, the trial of the first trial agreement of the criminal court takes about seven months, but the trial of the ‘Chungbuk Dong Branch case’ is Hasewol.” In particular, it is said that no trial has been held since August of last year.
The main reason is said to be due to the ‘application for avoidance’ that the defendants made twice to change the court. In particular, it is reported that the procedure for the second application for avoidance is considerably delayed, with no decision being made even after 80 days have passed since it went to the Supreme Court.
The first application for avoidance was filed against the 11th Criminal Division of the Cheongju District Court, the first trial court, by three of the defendants in January of last year. This application went through the 1st trial (trial period 17 days) and 2nd trial (21 days), and in March last year, the first division of the Supreme Court (presiding judge, Justice Noh Tae-ak) finally dismissed the application after 9 days of hearing. It took 47 days in total.
However, in March of last year, when the judges belonging to the 11th Criminal Division of the Cheongju District Court changed due to the appointment of a judge, the defendants filed a second challenge application in September of that year. This application was rejected after 60 days and 19 days in the first and second trials, respectively. As the defendants objected, the application for avoidance went up to the third part of the Supreme Court (presiding judge Lee Heung-gu) on December 28 last year.
Eighty days have passed since then, but Justice Lee has not come to a conclusion. Tired of waiting, the prosecution is said to have sent an opinion to the Supreme Court on the 1st of last month, asking for a quick decision to process the application for avoidance. People inside and outside the court said, “It seems that Supreme Court Justice Lee is too lazy to apply for habitual avoidance, which seems to have a clear purpose for delaying the trial.”
Some even mentioned the past history of Supreme Court Justice Heung-gu Lee, who was ‘the first Supreme Court judge who was a criminal of violation of the National Security Law’. In 1985, when he was a student at Seoul National University’s law school, Justice Lee was a member of the ‘Democratization Promotion Committee’, an ideological group at Seoul National University. After being sentenced to two years in prison and three years probation, he was pardoned in 1987.
After passing the bar exam in 1990 and being appointed as a judge in 1993, he was known as the ‘Judge No. 1 in violation of the National Security Law’. He became a Supreme Court judge in 2020 after serving as the presiding judge of the Daegu High Court and the Busan High Court.