Lee-Young-jo, ex-head of Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Korea, must pay 30 million won as he abused authority to ban Commission's report
The Lee Myung Bak administration chose not to renew the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Korea, although it was given an additional eight months to complete its final report, which was issued in December 2010. However, because Truth and Reconciliation Commission commissioners have a two-year tenure, the new administration was able to put its imprint on the work of the commission by appointing conservative commissioners who controlled the commission’s work during its final year.
This sudden switch in orientation led to controversy almost immediately when a newly conservative Commission chose not to issue an official English-language report printed a few months earlier by the previous progressive administration. The Commission claimed that the level of English was not up to par, but this was a pretext. (The three English-language editors that had proofread and edited the report promptly sued for libel, claiming that their professional reputations had been unfairly damaged, and that they were being unfairly scapegoated for the Commission’s politically motivated decision to disown the report.)
In May 2012, the Seoul Central District Court has ruled that Lee Young-jo, the former head of the Commission must pay 30 million won in compensation for abusing his authority to ban the distribution of the Commission’s English report. Many believed Lee Young-jo, viewed to have an extreme far-right ideology, prohibited the distribution of the English report, which his liberal predecessor Ahn Byung-ook commissioned as a part of efforts in acknowledging past atrocities, for ideological reasons. The ban drew much attention as it exemplified the challenges the nation faces in looking at dark chapters of history and deceitful reconciliation efforts between those in power and their victims.
In fact the English was near-perfect, but the introduction written by the Commission’s outgoing progressive President Ahn Byung Ook was seen as going beyond accepted limits in its criticism of Park Chung Hee and his motivations.(The introduction claimed that Park “supported U.S. military interests, and as a former low ranking Japanese officer (…) also sympathized with conditions that appealed to Japanese interests. Influenced by the extreme rightist ideology of Japanese nationalism and the sophisticated manipulation skills of the U.S. military, the Park military junta introduced an extreme right-wing Fascist regime into Korean society.” TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION OF KOREA, supra n. 83, at 6.
(Andrew Wolman, “The Evolution of Truth Commission in Korea, p.27)