Seoul — A South Korean court docket reopened a decades-old case on Wednesday after the nation’s #MeToo motion impressed a lady to problem her conviction for defending herself towards sexual violence 61 years in the past.
Choi Mal-ja was 19 when she was attacked by a 21-year-old man within the southern city of Gimhae in 1964. He pinned her to the bottom and compelled his tongue into her mouth, court docket information confirmed. Choi managed to interrupt free by biting off about half an inch of his tongue.
In one in every of South Korea’s most contentious rulings on sexual violence, the aggressor acquired solely six months in jail, suspended for 2 years, for trespassing and intimidation — however not tried rape.
However Choi was convicted of inflicting grievous bodily hurt and handed a 10-month jail sentence, suspended for 2 years.
The court docket stated on the time her motion had “exceeded the affordable bounds of legally permissible self-defense.”
Choi’s case gained renewed momentum many years later after #MeToo motion, which took off globally in 2017 and impressed her to hunt justice. In South Korea, large ladies’s rights protests led to victories on points starting from abortion entry to harder penalties for spycam crimes, and a reckoning for the worldwide Ok-pop music trade.
JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty
Choi filed for a retrial in 2020, however decrease courts initially rejected her petition. After years of campaigning and an enchantment, South Korea’s high court docket lastly ordered a retrial in 2024.
“For 61 years, the state made me reside as a prison,” Choi advised reporters exterior the Busan District Courtroom forward of Wednesday’s retrial listening to.
She stated she hoped future generations might “reside in a world free from sexual violence the place they will get pleasure from human rights and a cheerful life.”
Choi Solar-hye, govt director of the Korea Ladies’s Hotline counselling heart, which supported her case, advised AFP that her choice was additionally meant to “develop into a supply of energy for different victims of sexual violence and proper previous wrongs.”
On the retrial listening to on Wednesday, the prosecution requested the court docket to clear her of the previous conviction, the Busan District Courtroom advised AFP.
The decision is predicted in September this yr.
