South Korea | Man's wrongful spy charges overturned, 58 years after execution

Court says forced confession and wrongful conviction led to death penalty of innocent in 1967

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

Court officials said Wednesday 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, 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 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 leads to death and imprisonment

Oh Gyeong-dae, the younger-brother of Oh Gyeong-mu, was a tangerine farmer on Jeju Island in 1966 when he was approached by their long-lost half-brother, Oh Gyeong-ji. The eldest of the three, Gyeong-ji had gone missing during the 1950–53 Korean War. He asked Gyeong-dae to accompany him to Japan, but instead, took him to North Korea.

After they returned to the South, Gyeong-ji threatened the youngest brother and forced him to arrange a meeting with Gyeong-mu, who was living in Seoul. The two younger brothers were tricked into going to North Korea, and were received education on ideology of the totalitarian Pyongyang regime before being released 40 days later.

Oh Gyeong-mu and Oh Gyeong-dae turned themselves in to the South Korean authorities upon their return, but Seoul’s regime under dictatorial leader Park Chung-hee used oppressive means such as torture to force them into false confessions. The older Oh was sentenced to death and the younger Oh received 15 years in prison in a 1967 verdict. The execution was carried out five years later

Their younger sister was sentenced to three years in prison, suspended for five years, for knowingly aiding their spying activities.

Oh Gyeong-dae was cleared of his charges in November of 2020, and subsequent rulings have exonerated the wrongful charges against both his siblings.

Source: koreaherald.com, Yoon Min-sik, June 25, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde