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A South Korean woman is justified after a judgment reviewed her decades for a sentence of a man’s tongue during a suspected sexual attack.
Choi Mal-Ja was 18 years old when she was sentenced to serious bodily harm and sentenced to 10 months in prison. Her aggressor, who was 21, received a more six -month sentence.
After a long -standing campaign to clear her name, a re -examination in the southern town of Busan began in July. In his first hearing, Her prosecutors apologized And in an unusual move, he asked the court to overturns the sentence.
“I couldn’t let this case stay unanswered … I (I wanted) to uphold other victims who share the same fate as mine,” said G -ja Choi after the acquittal.
As a teenager, the incident then changed her fate by “turning the victim of an accused.”
“The people around me warned me that it would be like throwing eggs on a rock, but I couldn’t let this occasion,” said G -Ja Choi, now 79 years old.
She thanked her supporters and called out the authorities for whom she said she was “abusing her authority to trample the weak and manipulate the law.”
Mrs. Choi’s case was cited in legal textbooks in South Korea as a classic example of a court that failed to recognize self-defense during sexual abuse.
According to court records, the attacker nailed D -Ja Choi to the ground somewhere in the southern town of Gimhae. She only managed to release herself after he was biting about 1.5 cm (0.59 inches) of his tongue.
The man is constantly demanding compensation for his injury and even invaded Dz’s home with a knife once, the South Korean media reported.
In one of South Korea’s most arrogant decisions on sexual abuse, the man was sentenced to six months in prison – stopped for two years – for breach and intimidation. He has never been accused of attempting to rape.
Ms. Choi received a harsher sentence for causing him serious bodily harm, with the court saying at a time that her actions exceed the “reasonable boundaries” of self-defense.
She was detained for six months during the investigation and later received a 10-month sentence, which was suspended for two years.
In 2018, inspired by the global #Metoo movement, which also has South KoreaD -Ja Choi turned to advocacy groups and spent about two years in gathering evidence before applying for re -examination.
Her journey to anxiety is challenging. The lower courts rejected her petition, saying that there was no evidence to support her allegations of self -defense.
D -Ja Choi is fighting, saying that she does not want to see other victims of sexual abuse to go through what she has done. “(They) should not take the pain alone,” she told The Korea Herald in an interview.
Finally, in December 2024, the Supreme Court filed an application to reopen the case.
Outside the court on Wednesday, Mrs. Choi and her supporters were smiles, some of them holding signs that said, “Choi Mal-Ja did it!” and Choi Mal-Ja succeeded.
Mrs. Choi’s lawyer, Kim Su-Jung, identified the earlier conviction as “wrong assessment of gender and public perceptions”.
“Thanks to the ruthless battle of Choi Mal-Ja, without at all, the prosecutor’s office and the judiciary had the opportunity to correct this mistake today,” said Mrs. Kim.
She added that G -Ja Choi plans to bring a civil case against the state to seek compensation.
The hot line of women in Korea, one of the groups that supported D -Ja Choi in her campaign, believes that the verdict on Wednesday will pave the path to justice for the victims of sexual abuse.
“Continuing forward, women’s defense acts will be understood as legal. I expect this to mean that fewer women will face unjust suffering,” says Song Ran-Hi, who leads the group.
“The least will send a message to the victims. Even if the process you are going through now is painful and unjust, he says,” Your voice matters. Talk, “G -Ja Song tells the BBC.
There are at least two other cases of women who bite the languages of sexual attackers in South Korea – one in 1988 in the city of Andong and another in 2020 in Busan. In both cases, the courts shall give recognized as to what women do as legal acts of self -defense and pronounced the benefit of them.
