Seoul — A South Korean courtroom reopened a decades-old case on Wednesday after the rustic’s #MeToo motion impressed a girl to problem her conviction for protecting herself in opposition to sexual violence 61 years in the past.
Choi Mal-ja used to be 19 when she used to be attacked by means of a 21-year-old guy within the southern the town of Gimhae in 1964. He pinned her to the bottom and compelled his tongue into her mouth, courtroom data confirmed. Choi controlled to break away by means of biting off about part an inch of his tongue.
In certainly one of South Korea’s maximum contentious rulings on sexual violence, the aggressor won simplest six months in jail, suspended for 2 years, for trespassing and intimidation — however no longer tried rape.
However Choi used to be convicted of inflicting grievous physically hurt and passed a 10-month jail sentence, suspended for 2 years.
The courtroom stated on the time her motion had “exceeded the cheap bounds of legally permissible self-defense.”
Choi’s case received renewed momentum a long time later after #MeToo motion, which took off globally in 2017 and impressed her to hunt justice. In South Korea, large ladies’s rights protests ended in victories on problems starting from abortion get admission to to harder consequences for spycam crimes, and a reckoning for the global Ok-pop song trade.
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Choi filed for a retrial in 2020, however decrease courts first of all rejected her petition. After years of campaigning and an enchantment, South Korea’s best courtroom in any case ordered a retrial in 2024.
“For 61 years, the state made me reside as a felony,” Choi informed newshounds outdoor the Busan District Court docket forward of Wednesday’s retrial listening to.
She stated she was hoping long term generations may “reside in a global loose from sexual violence the place they are able to experience human rights and a cheerful lifestyles.”
Choi Solar-hye, govt director of the Korea Girls’s Hotline counselling middle, which supported her case, informed AFP that her choice used to be additionally supposed to “grow to be a supply of power for different sufferers of sexual violence and proper previous wrongs.”
On the retrial listening to on Wednesday, the prosecution requested the courtroom to transparent her of the previous conviction, the Busan District Court docket informed AFP.
The decision is anticipated in September this 12 months.
