Two men cleared of spy charges decades after guilty verdict

The nation's top court has acquitted two Japan-born Korean men of espionage and anti-state charges, 36 years after they were found guilty and imprisoned for two years, court officials said Wednesday.

Kim Jung-sa, 58, and Yoo Sung-sam, 59, were sentenced to 10 and three-and-a-half years, respectively, behind bars in 1977 on charges of passing on national secrets to a North Korean spy and criticizing a new constitution declared by the military-backed regime of the late President Park Chung-hee in the 1970s.

After serving two years, the two were released when their prison terms were suspended in 1979. They applied for a retrial in 2009 and an appellate court acquitted them of the charges.

Upholding the appellate court ruling, the Supreme Court said the duo had given forced confessions and the emergency decree No. 9 used as the legal basis to punish them is unconstitutional.

"The emergency decree was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Any convictions or punishments based on it are invalid," the top court said.

Kim and Yoo, university students in Seoul at the time, were arrested after taking a trip to an area near the inter-Korean border. They were tortured by intelligence agents to falsely confess that the trip was to gather South Korea's national secrets for a North Korean spy they had met in a pro-North Korea activist group in Seoul, the court officials said.

The top court's ruling marks the latest in a series of court acquittals of those indicted or imprisoned in the 1970s for breaching the emergency decree, which were used to subdue dissent.