【기억과 기념】 최종길 교수의 죽음과 진실규명의 과정 － 투신자살 의문사 를 거쳐 고문사 로 －

While serving as a professor at the College of Law, Seoul National University in South Korea, Tsche Chong-Kil(崔鍾吉) was taken into custody by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and died during investigation. KCIA announced that Tsche committed suicide by jumping from the 7th floor of a KCIA building after confessing to being the North Korean spy. However, the announcement failed to get any confidence, and his death remained one of the suspicious deaths under the military regime. At the time, the prosecution closed the investigation without any effort to find the truth within the statute of limintation. In 2002, the Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths could discover several meaningful truths. There was no fact that he confessed to being a spy, and there was no physical evidence that he was a spy. The KCIA manipulated the circumstances before and after his death and made false announcements. It was also revealed that KCIA investigators committed torture and savage atrocities to him. Based on that investigation, the state's responsibility for illegal acts was acknowledged by the court. While pursuing a judicial solution in civil action, the most difficult issue was whether the statute of limitations were applied for. The state invoked the statute of limitations and said that the statute of limitations for state compensation had already expired, but the appellate court ruled that the state's claim of statute of limitations was clearly unacceptable under the legal principle of abuse of rights. This later became the starting point for rejecting claims of statute of limitations for past state crimes in civil action. Now, Professor Tsche’s death is no longer treated as a suicide or suspicious death, but has been determined as a case of torture-to-death by the military regime. Decades of efforts to reveal the truth about Tsche's case have been backed by the progress of Korea's democratization, and are currently serving as a driving force calling for the legislation of various legal solutions, such as the repeal of the statute of limitations to the grave state-illegalities. The School of Law, Seoul National University has been conducting memorial projects including the honoring of Tsche, Chong-Kil Hall.