SPOTLIGHT 26/04/09 Korean prelate regrets ‘insufficient’ support to 1975 execution v

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A court verdict in January 2007 posthumously acquitted all eight pro-democracy activists in the Inhyeokdang incident 

The Inhyeokdang incident victims from top left: Kim Yong-won, Do Ye-jong, Seo Do-won, Song Sang-jin, and from bottom left Yeo Jeong-nam, Woo Hong-seon, Lee Soo-byeong, Ha Jae-wan. (Photo: People's Revolutionary Party Incident/Namu Wiki)

By UCA News reporter

Published: April 14, 2026 06:22 AM GMT

Updated: April 14, 2026 06:37 AM GMT

A Catholic archbishop in South Korea has expressed regret over the Church’s failure to sufficiently speak for the victims of a sedition case — known as the Inhyeokdang incident — who were executed within 18 hours of a court verdict in 1975, but exonerated posthumously.

The Church did not remain long enough by the side of the suffering, said Archbishop Thaddeus Cho Hwan-gil of Daegu in a letter read at a memorial Mass organized on April 9.

“At times, our church has failed to speak sufficiently where we should have testified and failed to remain sufficiently by the side of the [people whose] suffering we should have shared,” Archbishop Cho said.

The eight victims of the Inhyeokdang incident were accused of “attempting to build a communist nation in South Korea by overthrowing the government under North Korea’s instruction.”

While many Catholic Church figures in South Korea have acknowledged the Inhyeokdangor People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP) incident, the Daegu archdiocese is the first to organize a public memorial Mass.

Father Paul Lee Gwan-hong, chair of the Daegu archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commission, read Archbishop Cho’s letter to the gathering.

The Mass themed 51st Anniversary Memorial Service for the April 9 Unification Martyrs was held at the Martyrs’ Cemetery in North Gyeongsang Province.

The eight pro-democracy activists were executed over trumped-up sedition charges obtained through torture and coercion by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in 1974.

The activists were members of the PRP who opposed the "Yushin System" enacted during the authoritarian regime under President Park Chung-hee (1962-1979).

Park’s Yushin or Revitalization Reform was a repressive system that gave him dictatorial power.

A new constitution was promulgated in December 1971, which permitted the reelection of the president for an unlimited number of six-year terms.

In 2002, an investigative commission found that the charges were fabricated and statements forced through torture, and a court verdict in January 2007 posthumously acquitted all eight victims of the incident.

The court also awarded the family members 63.7 billion Korean Won (around US$68 million at the time) as compensation.

Archbishop Cho, while acknowledging that the prayers and words of consolation from the Church had fallen short of comforting the victims’ family members, reaffirmed his archdiocese’s commitment to “live lives of witness.”

“We pledge to continue that witness not through silence but through remembrance, not by turning away but by standing together,” Cho said.

Cho also warned his listeners of the dangers of how state power can destroy human dignity and urged them to reflect on what it means to “bear witness.”

“When falsehood takes the place of truth, when silence becomes a means of obscuring the truth, that which remains and does not ultimately vanish in the face of it — that is witness,” Cho said.

*This is a translated and edited version of the report that first appeared in the Catholic Times of Korea on April 10, 2026, and has been republished with permission.