In 1965, a South Korean woman was convicted of inflicting bodily harm on a man after she bit a half inch off his tongue during an attempted rape. On Wednesday, a court absolved her in a retrial after six decades.
“I, Choi Mal-ja, am finally innocent!” shouted the 79-year-old woman on Wednesday after the district court in the city of Busan ruled that her act was “justified as self-defense.”
On a May evening in 1964, Ms. Choi, then 18, was sexually assaulted by a 21-year-old stranger. He pinned her to the ground, straddled her and tried to force his tongue into her mouth. She bit his tongue and escaped.
Seventeen days later, the man and several of his friends raided Ms. Choi’s home in the southern town of Gimhae. He threatened to stab her father with a kitchen knife. He later sued Ms. Choi on charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm. She countered by suing him on charges of attempted rape, trespassing and blackmailing.
The police considered Ms. Choi innocent and arrested the man. But prosecutors later released him and let him stand trial as a free man. The man was charged with trespassing and blackmailing, but not with attempted rape. Prosecutors instead arrested Mr. Choi. She was charged with inflicting “grievous bodily harm” on the man.
During interrogations by prosecutors, Ms. Choi had to go through a virginity test, and the result was made public during her trial, according to court records. Ms. Choi and her lawyers also said that prosecutors and judges blamed her for “crippling a young man” and asked whether she would like to settle the case by marrying her attacker.
Ms. Choi was in jail for six months until a judge sentenced her to 10 months in prison in January 1965 then set her free by suspending the sentence. At the time, the court said her action against the man exceeded the “reasonable bounds” of self-defense. Her attacker was given a lighter sentence: six months in prison, also suspended.
Ms. Choi could never let go of the injustice. She passed a general equivalency diploma test and enrolled in a correspondence college in her 60s, studying women’s issues and human rights. In 2020, inspired by the #MeToo movement, she filed for a retrial, 56 years after the incident.
In South Korea, where women still report widespread misogyny, her legal battle has since become a cause célèbre. Women’s rights groups have rallied behind her.
The district and appeals courts in Busan both rejected her demand, citing a lack of evidence that she deserved a retrial. But in December, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial. Ms. Choi’s right to legal justice was compromised six decades ago by unfair investigations and trials, and South Korea’s “deeply patriarchal society brimming with bias against women,” the top court said.
The retrial began this year. Her victory was widely expected since July, when prosecutors apologized for mistreating Ms. Choi, causing “her immeasurable pain and suffering,” and called her innocent.
The man who attacked Ms. Choi was not part of the retrial and was not named in court documents.
“People said that what I was doing was as futile as hitting a rock with eggs,” Ms. Choi said about her long struggle for justice during a news conference on Wednesday. “But I could not keep it buried. I wanted to give hope to victims who faced the same situation as I did.”
In 2020, when Ms. Choi filed for retrial, a woman bit off part of a man’s tongue during an attempted rape. In that case, only the male attacker was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.
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