Rhyu Si-min's detailed appeal statement as presented to the court in 1985, reflecting on justice, conscience, and the struggle for democracy under a military regime.
The defendant hereby submits this appeal statement in response to the judgment rendered on April 1, 1985 by the Southern Branch of the Seoul District Court, which sentenced him to 1 year and 6 months' imprisonment for violating the Act on Punishment of Violent Acts, as follows.
First of all, I wish to clarify that the purpose of this appeal is not to assert my own innocence or to plead for mitigation of my sentence. Rather, it is the result of an effort to fulfill my obligations as a progressive human being yearning for a morally improved society. Additionally, I am neither aware, nor do I wish to be aware, of any controversies the first-instance ruling may contain, since the standard by which I judge the legitimacy of my actions is the conscience given by God, not human-made law.
As someone without specialized legal knowledge, my own simple belief that in a society where just laws are exercised fairly, the dictates of conscience and the law should never stand in antagonistic contradiction, was—inevitably—the foundation of my life and continues to be so.
All manifestations of violence between people or groups are fundamentally both a reflection of and a determining factor for the political, social, and moral level of that society at the time.
Therefore, having been convicted at first instance for violating the aforementioned Act, I believe I have a duty to clarify how the incident in which I was involved reflects and may shape the political, social, and moral conditions of our society and to elucidate the ethical responsibilities of all individuals and groups involved.
If our society, in the wake of such a tragic event—where university students attacked peers—learns nothing more than the simplistic lesson that “Dog-dung and Cow-dung beat up Horse-dung and so were punished,” then that itself would be an even greater tragedy than the incident itself.
In short, this appeal statement is a petition to the judiciary: a moral warning to the corrupt, legal sanctions against lawbreakers, and a request for the truth to be revealed to the public buried under false propaganda.
To be clear, as I am not here to discuss the law, whenever words like 'responsibility,' 'duty,' or 'fault' are used here without qualifiers, please regard them as carrying an implicit ethical or moral meaning. Emphatic words or sentences are marked with a raised dot.
My aim is to first define this incident, then to explain it, and finally, by analyzing the actions taken by all involved—students and the present regime (I use "regime" to point out that the Fifth Republic lacks legitimacy and rightful authority by the standards of the liberal democracy I uphold)—to accomplish the purpose of this writing.
Students have called this incident "the SNU Agent Incident," while the regime and mass media have named it "the SNU Outsider Assault Incident" or simply the "SNU Lynch Incident." The difference in these names signifies a fundamentally different perspective, but this does not alter the essence of the case.
If I, to the extent possible, attempt an objective definition: this is an incident where, amid escalating mutual tension between the regime and academia on the Gwanak campus, several SNU students detained and interrogated four fake students accused of being government agents—at times using varying degrees of violence.
To clarify this "mutually antagonistic tension," a review of the anti-dictatorship student movement since the May 16, 1961 military coup, its many subsequent protests—including the anti-Japan normalization struggle of 1964-65, the Mincheonghakryeon protests of 1974, and the Busan-Masan popular uprising of 1979—is called for, but I will restrict my scope to the period following the December 12, 1979 military coup, when the current regime consolidated its dictatorship.
Today’s economic contradictions, social conflicts, political corruption, and cultural degeneration were all conceived under, and have flourished further under, this regime—descended from the Yushin (Restoration) dictatorship. The current regime trampled on the nation’s fragile hopes for the restoration of democracy and came to power, covered in blood, through the brutal suppression of the Gwangju Uprising using "the people’s military."
Before it had even officially launched, the regime had already become morally bankrupt. Their so-called "new era" is in fact a rebranded Yushin dictatorship, forced upon the nation under threat of arms. Their idea of "justice" is the authoritarian rule of a military elite; their "welfare" is the pleasure of the privileged.
The tendency to abolish "inefficient" democratic institutions in the name of economic growth is, in essence, fascism. Modern history proves that fascist regimes ultimately lead their nations to disaster, whether through war or internal collapse. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, militarist Japan, Franco’s Spain, the military regimes in Chile and Argentina, the fallen Yushin system, and Marcos’s crumbling Philippines all exemplify this.
A nation commands respect not because it is a nation, but because it alone can provide the conditions for all members to pursue happiness and self-fulfillment without hindering one another.
Over the years, labor activists fighting for humane conditions, conscientious clergy striving to realize God’s kingdom on earth, journalists and professors bearing witness to truth, democratic politicians leading the call for institutional restoration, and students at the vanguard of these struggles have all argued that this military dictatorship, so fundamentally undemocratic, immoral, and oppressive, cannot be the legitimate representative of this dignified nation.
We believe our people have the right and ability to have a more democratic government. Yet over the four years since the December 12 coup, more than 1,300 students have been detained for various crimes, another 1,400 expelled, and at least 500 forcibly conscripted into the army from police custody. Unprecedented suppression was carried out, including surveillance stations throughout campuses, undercover police posted everywhere, and even faculty mobilized for protest suppression. Nonetheless, the regime has never acknowledged these facts. When, in 1982, a young female student was sexually assaulted on campus by an alleged agent, the country’s highest police chief blandly denied the presence of police on campus before the National Assembly.
The current deep distrust and enmity among students toward security forces is just one of the many damaging consequences of state suppression and habitual lying from those in power.
The lies of Aesop’s fabled shepherd boy led only to lost sheep, but King You of Zhou’s ruse to please his consort led to centuries of war in China. No sensible person blames only the villagers or vassals for ignoring their rulers’ false alarms. Who then is responsible for students’ distrust of government pronouncements, no matter how trivial?
Crude and unethical campus suppression provoked resistance across universities, leading to the deaths or serious injury of numerous students. At Seoul National University alone, Kim Tae-hoon, Hwang Jeong-ha, and Han Hee-chul lost their lives. Aside from the main battle line shifting to the campus gates after the so-called "autonomization measures" of December 1983, little has changed. Intensified campus surveillance, checkpoints, tailing, and forced detentions—especially around the restoration of the student council last fall—fueled unprecedented hostility.
Thus, the adversarial tension between the regime and the academy persisted even after the "autonomization measures." The incident at hand arose naturally and unexpectedly under these conditions, when individuals suspected of being informers engaged in suspicious behavior. Details have already been revealed so only supplemental explanations about these "fake students" seem necessary. Whether or not they were actual informers is politically significant; for our legal and ethical concerns, it is not.
Students acted against "suspected informers," not confirmed ones, so the use of violence wasn't justified; neither could all student actions be deemed wholly unwarranted. I refrain from further debate on whether they were real informers, not because I believe they were not, but for this reason.
The proliferation of impostor students—a byproduct of various institutional policies that have turned universities into factories of isolated technical professionals rather than critical intellectual communities—has bred widespread distrust and undermined campus solidarity. The regime, by tolerating this parasitic group, not only disrupts student unity but shifts the blame for problems caused by their own undercover police onto these impostors (as in the aforementioned case of sexual assault).
Thus, the students’ contempt for such elements requires no further explanation. When caught gathering information about student activities while posing as students in meetings, offices, or lectures, is it morally right to ignore it for fear of the law? In this state of mutual antagonism, could students have reported suspected informers to the agencies that likely sent them?
Although campuses are open spaces and even overt surveillance by hundreds of police could be technically legal, I have never heard anyone argue these actions are ethically right. On the other hand, practical resistance by students against such unethical campus suppression, though ethically justified, is nevertheless a clear violation of current law. Thus, an antagonistic contradiction between law and conscience inevitably arises—one that could not exist in a just society. No one can uphold both law and conscience under these circumstances.
This is why students claim that this incident is a concentrated expression of the current political and social contradictions facing our society.
Laws have the power of force; conscience does not. Law is relative and temporary; conscience is absolute and eternal. Law is man-made; conscience is a gift from God. I followed my conscience—not because law is unimportant, but because conscience is more important. All students have done so, not only in this case but in all previous incidents. The chain of events last September happened this way.
Though relatively simple in itself, the case triggered severe repercussions—an occupation protest at the Democratic Korea Party office, expulsion and detention of key student council leaders, the regime and media’s attack on "student violence,” student boycotts and a massive police intervention, culminating in guilty verdicts for defendants who denied most of the charges. The occupation protest, led by Student Defense Corps leader Baek Tae-woong and belatedly by Measures Committee chair Oh Jae-young on September 28, was an organized escalation of outrage against campus surveillance and the regime’s undemocratic rule. Even if there were legal or ethical faults in investigating the impostors, that does not justify covering up campus surveillance, a separate political problem. Thus, I believe the protest was justifiable in itself.
The very next day, four key student leaders were summarily expelled; on September 30, I was detained without a warrant, interrogated for several days, and arrested.
I was taken first because I didn’t flee. I didn’t flee because I felt no need to, and I saw no need because I had done nothing that warranted running away. In both police and court interrogations, I made no changes to my statements, except for minor errors of memory, and simply told the truth.
On October 4, the police announced through all media that the incident was intentional and organized under my and other student leaders’ direction. No student detained by that date, including myself, gave any testimony supporting this. Later arrest warrants, indictments, and statements were crafted to fit this announcement. A chronological review of documents makes this evident. In a word, the October 4 police release was a concoction designed for political purposes: to brand the student movement as violent and destructive and to conceal the inherently violent and immoral nature of the regime.
To achieve this, the incident had to be portrayed as premeditated and orchestrated by student organizations—not spontaneous. Only thus could the entire movement, not just a few individuals, be slandered. Student council presidents, Defense Corps leaders, incident committee chairs, and returnee council reps, regardless of their actual roles, were to be the easiest propaganda targets.
These tactics merely replicate old methods used by generations of dictatorships. In the end, the regime has at least partly succeeded in blocking the student council’s activities and tarnishing the moral authority of the student movement.
Prosecutors, too, did nothing to investigate the truth, but merely backed the police's claims.
In November, more than a month after the incident, police tortured Kim Do-hyung, Son Taek-man, and other innocent students to extract false confessions—a fact admitted by the officers themselves. In other words, evidence that the accused violated the anti-violence law was obtained by violating that very law.
Even setting aside the issue of using such coerced confessions as evidence, the principle of "equality before the law" remains unresolved. Unlike past Emergency Measures or the current "Assembly and Demonstration Act"—laws with no just ethical foundation—this anti-violence statute ought to be obeyed in a just society. Yet one's standing before the law varies according to one's politics on the regime.
Despite routine police violence and torture, I've never heard of any police detectives being prosecuted for violating these very laws, but when a pregnant woman lost her unborn child after an encounter with police during a Gwangju Uprising memorial gathering, the authorities failed to even investigate. I myself was often assaulted during interrogations but never even considered seeking protection under this law. Yet, I was convicted under this law, despite never threatening or assaulting anyone.
I recount all this not to evade responsibility, but to highlight the political bias ingrained within the legal process.
Most of the prosecution’s allegations are based on the police’s electoral, fabricated version of events, relying both on widely circulated prejudice and on the false confessions coerced from students.
Again, I am not denouncing the regime merely to avoid responsibility for the students’ or my own legal and ethical lapses. While detaining and investigating fake students may be ethically justified, I am not prepared to justify actual violence against them. Detentions for investigation should be as brief as possible and violence must be avoided. Even if something looks violent, it's not always essentially so, but group violence against a powerless individual, even if sparked by legitimate resentment against the police or in mimicry of their abuse, is plainly a violation of nonviolent principles. Likewise, those responsible for violence should have owned up, and the failure to do so (even under difficult political circumstances at the time) reflects an ethical flaw on the students’ part. Yet the noble act of then Student Council President Lee Jeong-woo, who assumed full responsibility and even gave up his appeal, partially compensated for this ethical vacuum.
For my part, though I never instructed or directed any actions (because there was no need), if necessary, I would have willingly participated myself, fully aware of its illegality. As defacto head of the returnee council, I had both a passive duty to personally observe nonviolence and an active duty to ensure the movement as a whole did the same. Thus, when I witnessed Jeon Gi-dong and Jeong Yong-beom being beaten on the night of September 26 and did nothing to stop it, my ethical responsibility is certainly greater than other students’ (regardless of the legal view). As for Im Sin-hyeon and Son Hyung-gu, by the time I learned of the incident the detentions and investigations were already underway, and I had no need to give any instructions. But I clearly consented to their detention for investigation and briefly participated myself, so I cannot deny my breach of the law and will accept responsibility. However, in these two cases, I strove to ensure brief detention and nonviolence, and as this was actually achieved, I feel no ethical guilt.
In short, I could have, like Lee Jeong-woo, taken on more responsibility, and that might not have been a bad thing. But, as I have stated, I resolved not to admit to false charges, however minor, so as not to become an instrument in the regime's plots. This is the only way I can show my sense of accountability is fundamentally different from the forced self-incrimination demanded by the public prosecutor.
Furthermore, I must mention the political meaning of this trial and assert that the judiciary, to become an agent of our society's moral advance, must fulfill its ethical obligation. This case, arising amid mutual distrust and antagonism between the regime and academia, began with actions by fake students that were not technically illegal but were manifestly unethical, provoking responses from students that were not essentially unethical but nonetheless illegal.
The regime’s acts in recent years—lying about police deployment, covert surveillance under the guise of “autonomy,” and shameless fabrication for political ends—are all branches grown from the same corrupt roots.
But this trial is not concerned with diagnosing the case’s true causes or prescribing solutions, but only punishing the illegal acts of the students. The judiciary may not intend to justify the regime’s campus suppression, but the lower court’s verdict, treating even investigative detentions (not the violence) as criminal, effectively declares "safe passage for fake students and informers."
I do not ask for an acquittal for all involved. Again: the corrupt deserve moral warnings, lawbreakers deserve legal sanctions, and the public deserving truth—a clear allocation of moral and legal responsibility is essential for any moral progress in our society. A courtroom is holy, not simply because it is a court, but because it is where the masks of falsehood are ripped off and truth is sometimes seen, however ugly.
If our judiciary truly stands for justice, and if justice does not mean the rule of the strong, then the truth buried during the first trial must again see light. Otherwise, this incident will further harden barriers of distrust and enmity and similar, perhaps worse, crises will inevitably recur.
Over the past five years, all 1,500 prisoners of conscience imprisoned for opposing the regime have been convicted by “just” judges. Under the savage Yushin dictatorship, many were imprisoned under the infamously unjust Emergency Measures. Even reporting on Emergency Measure violations was itself a violation. Even defense lawyers were jailed for their arguments. Few now claim the Emergency Measures were just, or that those once convicted as criminals were subversive elements, but the courts that convicted them are still called holy, and the prosecutors and judges who did the convicting are said to serve justice.
If one says, “our judiciary has ignored justice,” one means “the courts have become execution grounds for democracy.” If one says "the judiciary has always established justice,” and means it, one must surely believe “justice is the will of the dictator.”
I wish to be judged in such a sacred court not because its floor is stained by the blood of murdered democracy, but because only there can truth be revealed. I hope the judge who convicts me is not merely someone who cares for justice only to the extent his own position is secure, but one wise enough to uphold justice even if the sky should fall. I believe revealing the truth is the foundation upon which justice stands.
Based on the above, I will briefly state my reasons for rejecting the lower court’s verdict. I was saddened upon receiving the decision, for it bore little relation to what the seven session hearings actually established. Only belatedly did I realize the trial had been nothing but a formality to decorate a predetermined verdict.
For example, the verdict claims, "…Im Sin-hyeon was…beaten, and defendant Yoo Si-min ordered unnamed students to verify Im's identity…" If such a student existed and was shown to be following my orders, how can their name be unknown? And even relying solely on Im’s own court testimony, it is impossible to prove I was even present at the scene, let alone issuing any orders.
As for the claim I beat Son Hyung-gu—a contradiction of Son’s court testimony, where he says he was never assaulted by Baek Tae-woong or myself—this too is baseless. Other such assertions (that I conspired with others to interrogate Jeong Yong-beom, etc.) merely distort the facts, contradict witness statements, and replicate the police narrative uncritically.
These examples are not isolated but typify the many contradictions throughout the verdict, evidence that its contents were simply taken, without change, from the fabricated police statement of October 4. Thus, I cannot but see the lower court as having abdicated its duty to clarify the true ethical and legal responsibility of those involved, and thus contributing nothing to our society’s moral progress.
Again, I point out this is not to escape responsibility, but to demand a conviction according to valid reasons, not baseless allegations.
Finally, as someone now made a byword for “violent radical student,” I wish to append a personal confession. I am not more passionate or self-righteous than others, certainly not a “red” nor an admirer of violence. I am nothing but an ordinary young man, who thinks the words of his forgotten elementary teachers—see injustice and intervene, share in others’ pain, never lie—are immutable truths.
By this confession, I wish to defend not just myself, but the entire struggle and the infinite, sacrificial love for country that motivates student movements for democracy.
Seven years ago, when I left for Seoul, I was a naïve 19-year-old hopeful for, and proud of, becoming a judge, thinking it the best way to repay my parents. At the time, I had no idea that "Restoration System" meant bloodshed and prison. When my high school teacher praised dictatorial rule, I believed him. The future gleamed with promise.
But soon after—before acacia bloomed and after azaleas had withered—on a blindingly sunny May day, hiding frightened in a student center corner, I watched a slender girl being dragged by the hair through tear gas and tears. Since then everything has changed.
The sight of the withered campus lawn, trampled daily by riot police, became a permanent wound in my heart. The fact that my room and board cost more than a girl’s monthly wage shamed me. Even a drink or a party would often leave a flush of guilt. Maybe these were all signs of becoming a “problem student.”
That winter, after seeing beloved seniors become criminals in “the sacred court,” I eventually abandoned my dream of becoming a judge.
The next summer, elected as economics representative, I gained the authorities’ official stamp as a “problem student,” and began leading protests. After the crumbling of the Yushin regime, I participated in the movement to restore the student council, becoming Speaker of its council in March 1980. When that movement was crushed on May 17, I was suddenly detained.
Brutal experiences with military and police—who boasted of beating professors and priests—forced me to sign, against my belief, a false confession that Kim Dae-jung gave money to each student president. Released after three months, I was swiftly conscripted within 40 hours of a draft exam, becoming a "forcibly drafted student." On the night before enlistment, as I had my hair cut at an unfamiliar barber, I realized that being alive was no longer a blessing, but a humiliation.
For 32 months, I lived as a “special status” soldier, constantly monitored and isolated from all responsible posts in my infantry company, enduring bitter cold and barbed wire in Korea’s eastern front.
But I consider it great luck that I could serve my three years as a good soldier.
However, two months before discharge, I was subjected to the infamous "re-education (Nokhwa) operation” involving forced pledges to become government informers—a deeply inhuman oppression. Though in uniform, I yielded under fear, but could not escape the pain of conscience. What renewed my will to struggle was the news that six fellow forcibly drafted students committed suicide or died in mysterious circumstances rather than betray their comrades.
In December 1983, when expelled students were allowed to return, I and others formed the “Committee for Reinstatement of Expelled Students” to protest forced conscription and call for university democratization, refusing return. Even as the regime denied the existence of these operations, it mounted a propaganda campaign labeling us a handful of radical leftist students.
When I was allowed to return the following September, I acted on my belief that the struggle for democracy must continue in some form always, and organized the Returnee Council. But within two weeks, I was expelled and arrested again over this incident, and my name became synonymous with “violent student.”
Thus, I became the first student expelled twice after May 17, the first arrested after the so-called "autonomization measures,” and convicted for violating the anti-violence law. Yet I still believe my hands have never committed violence, and my character remains gentle. Therefore, except for the agony of my aged mother who mourns my suffering in court or under the prison wall, my heart is always at peace and joyful, though my body is confined.
The reason that a gentle 19-year-old is today reviled as an unpardonable violent criminal is not because he has become brutal, but because this is an era that makes the most passionate fighters from its gentlest souls. My journey these seven years is not unique—it is the common experience of all students of this era.
Based on my faith in democracy, I am convinced that the student movement for restoration of democracy is the dawn bell stirring the slumbering masses.
Today, May 27, is the anniversary of the last fire of the great Gwangju people’s uprising, the day our beloved comrade Kim Tae-hoon fell, staining the Acropolis steps with his pure blood—and the day of Buddha’s birth.
On this holy day, I dedicate this sincerely written letter to the memory of all who sacrificed for human liberation, wishing it might do something to uncover the hidden truth.
Because I love my flawed country all the more for its contradictions, I wish to conclude my humble soliloquy with these lines from Nekrasov, ever relevant in an age of injustice:
“Those who live without sadness or anger do not love their country.”
May 27, 1985
Name: Rhyu Si-min To: Honorable Chief Judge, 5th Criminal Appeals Division, Seoul District Court
