1950-60년대 사형수들의 현실과 내면세계 : 김홍섭 판사에게 보낸 사형수들의 편지를 중심으로

has been 50 years since Judge Hong-seop Kim (1915-1965) passed away. His life as a simple and humble Catholic Christian has had a significant influence on the Korean legal field. In March 2015, Judge Kim‘s family released 186 letters to the public. The letters were written between 1959 and 1965 by 66 prisoners. Forty-six prisoners among them were the inmates who were sentenced to death between 1956 and 1964 for espionage, robbery-murder, child-abduction-murder, or rape-murder. The purpose of this study is to examine the meaning of the capital punishment in the life of Judge Kim and to analyze the characteristics and significance of the letters that the prisoners wrote to him. First, the most obvious feature of these letters would be the will to survive. Even though the court’s decision of death sentence was final, the prisoners wanted to inform Judge Kim, a man of heart, of the illegal detainment and torture conducted by authoritarian and suppressive legal system, wishing for the opportunity of new trial. It seems that the prisoners expected from him not only the rescue in this life through new trials but also the salvation in after-life through Catholicity. Second, the prisoners reflected on what they had done throughout their lives and sincerely repented of their sins they committed after they became a devout Catholics. Third, they wanted to keep a record, worried their families, and appreciated Kim’s care for them in the face of impending death. The letter to Judge Kim is a calm but strong messenger asserting the injustice of the capital punishment through showing us the conditions of the prisoners in 1950s and 1960s. I wish these letters pave the way to break through the hidden truth resulted from the death penalty.