A Girl`s Petition Moves a Judge

"Dear Judge, please forgive my loving Dad now. My dead Mom would forgive Dad who waved his fist at her."

A teen-age girl`s earnest petition for forgiving her father, who was expecting a severe sentence, has moved the judge`s heart.

Misfortune in Miss Lee`s family began last May. Miss Lee`s father (44) who had managed a beer bar thought that his wife had committed adultery and beat her to death. Mr. Lee was arrested and indicted on charges of attempted manslaughter resulting in death and Miss Lee had to undertake the position of `the head of the family as a girl` in her deaf bother`s place.

Miss Lee started conducting a campaign to collect signatures of the village folk and friends in school for a petition for her father immediately. She appealed to the people saying, "Even though my Dad committed an accidental crime out of jealousy, he loved Mom more than anyone." and collected 900 petitions and submitted them to the court.

When a certain women`s organization demanded that the court pronounce a severe punishment on him, accusing him of ` heinous family violence`, Miss Lee visited the organization and protested strongly saying "That is not the truth."

Miss Lee also flied to Togo in Africa to meet her maternal uncle who rejected the petition and persuaded him to change his mind. She appealed to her uncle who was treating her coldly in a foreign country for a one month period. Finally, she succeeded in getting a written agreement from him supporting the petition.

The second detective division of Seoul high court (Lee Seong-Ryong, the chief judge) sentenced Mr. Lee to 3 years in prison. This was shorter than the sentence of 10 years pronounced by the prosecution and the sentence of 5 years in the first trial.

The court declared, "Although the nature of the crime of beating his wife severely to death, dragging her over an hour, is extremely bad, I reduced the prison term, considering that Mr. Lee deeply regrets the crime and his daughter got her uncle to forgive the deed in a distant country in Africa."

Jung-Eun Lee lightee@donga.com