Man's defection charge cleared 39 years after he was wrongly imprisoned

A South Korean court recently overturned a 1987 ruling, saying the defendant at the time was wrongly convicted of trying to defect to North Korea. The Seoul High Court last month cleared the defendant of all charges in the retrial, conducted nearly 40 years after the initial ruling. The defendant was a conscripted soldier, accused of attempting to flee to the North in June 1987 while repairing the fences. The prosecutors had said that the man, who was often hungry because his tonsillitis hindere

By The Korea Herald