Cheongju won a case of appeal where direct descendants of the pro-Japanese government official Min Young-eun sued Cheongju city for a ‘Land Reclamation Suit’.

  In March 2011, five of Min Young-eun’s descendants sued Cheongju city to demolish the road and relinquish the 573 pyeong(1894m²) land in downtown. The property, which was acquired after Min became a government official, was judged as an asset from his pro-Japanese activities, so it was vested by the government. However, the land relevant to this suit is land which had been excluded from redemption by the National Treasury.

  Cheongju lost the first trial which happened on November 1st, 2012. Cheongju claimed that Min donated the land, but the Justice Department decided that Cheongju occupied it without permission because the land was not the object of redemption by the National Treasury. Concerning this, Cheongju was sentenced to pay about 2 hundred million won, which are ill-gotten gains from occupation without permission, for the plaintiff.

  After the first trial, civic groups organized a countermeasure committee which opposed the suit and implemented a signature-collecting campaign downtown and online. The total number of participants in this campaign was 19,000.

  In the appellate judgment, which Cheongju won on November 5th, the Justice Department presumed that the relevant land was obtained by pro-Japanese activities. Min Young-eun cooperated with the land investigation business, which Japan executed for 6 years, and blocked the spread of the March of the first independence movement of Korea before he worked as a government official. The Justice Department insisted that Min’s property, which was obtained between 1904, when the Russo-Japanese War happened, and the independence of Korea, was obtained by pro-Japanese activities.

  The descendants, who lost the appeal showed the possibility of an appeal to the Supreme Court, but Cheongju is planning to sue them to transfer the right of the relevant land’s ownership. The Justice Department of the court decided for the first time to overturn a decision by the Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property, which decides whether the property of pro-Japanese people has to be redeemed to the National Treasury or not. It determined the property, which was excluded from the redemption list, belonged to a pro-Japanese person. Therefore, it is not legal property. It seems like this court will influence the other judgments of pro-Japanese descendants’ property redemption suits.