A South Korean court has acquitted a 78-year-old woman after overturning a decades-old conviction for biting off a part of the tongue of a man during a sexual attack.
Choi Mal Ja, then 18, was sexually assaulted by a 21-year-old stranger in May 1964 in the southern town of Gimhae. He pinned her to the ground and tried to force his tongue into her mouth. She managed to break free by biting off his tongue, cutting off about 1.5cm of his tongue.
The man received only a suspended six-month sentence for trespassing and intimidation. He was not convicted of attempted rape.
Instead, Choi was convicted of causing bodily harm in 1965 and given a 10-month prison term, suspended for two years.
On Wednesday, the district court in the city of Busan cleared her name following a retrial, nearly 60 years after her conviction.
“I, Choi Mal Ja, am finally innocent!” she shouted outside the courthouse, after judges ruled her act was “justified as self-defence”.
In the first hearing of the case in July, after the retrial began this year, prosecutors apologised to her and asked the court to repeal her conviction for causing “her immeasurable pain and suffering”.
“I could not let this case go unanswered… I [wanted] to stand up for other victims who share the same fate as mine,” Ms Choi said.
She thanked those who supported her in her legal fight and denounced those who abused their power to manipulate the law.
“People around me warned me that it would be like throwing eggs at a rock, but I could not let this case go,” Ms Choi added about her struggle to seek justice.
“But I could not keep it buried. I wanted to give hope to victims who faced the same situation as I did.”
The accused sued Ms Choi on charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm and demanded compensation for causing him injury.
More than two weeks after the incident in 1964, the man and several of his friends tried to intimidate Ms Choi by raiding her home and also threatened to stab her father.
Initially, the police arrested the accused but prosecutors later released him and let him stand trial as a free man. Following the trial Ms Choi was arrested and remained in detention for six months during the investigation and was later convicted.
Ms Choi also had to go through a virginity test during the trial and the results were made public. Prosecutors reportedly even tried to persuade her to marry him.
In 2020, inspired by the #MeToo movement, Ms Choi sought a retrial, more than half a century after the assault.
Her petitions were repeatedly dismissed by lower courts, but in December 2023 the Supreme Court intervened, ordering a retrial on the grounds that the original investigation and trial had been tainted by bias and unfair procedures.
For decades, Ms Choi’s ordeal has appeared in South Korean legal texts as a textbook example of how courts once failed to recognise self-defence in cases of sexual assault.
“Even though it was clearly self-defence, she was treated as the perpetrator,” said Choi Ran, deputy director of the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Centre. “Investigators went so far as to suggest she should marry her attacker, as he will have limitations in social activities.”
