‘사회대중당 형사사건기록’을 통해 본 사회대중당 사건의 경과와 귀결

Abstract

In this article, new data were presented for further research and expansion of discussion of the Social Mass Party. The “Criminal Case Record of the Social Mass Party” is data on the “Social Mass Party Case” immediately after the May 16 military coup in 1961. This data consists of an attachment document including the case sent by the Yongsan Police Station and the interrogation records of the Revolutionary Prosecutors’ Office, and the trial records of the Revolutionary Court. It can be said to be a detailed record of the entire Social Mass Party case. It is currently held in the National Archives of Korea as an important data that is useful for researching reformist parties including the Social Mass Party and can obtain information that has not been known so far. In this paper, this data was used to grasp the progress and consequences of the Social Mass Party case. The military regime, which came to power in a coup on May 16, 1961, intensively suppressed the reformist party by advocating anti-communism. The Social Mass Party executives were arrested from May 18 and interrogated by the police, and the contents of the interrogation were contained in the “Criminal Case Record of the Social Mass Party”. The Social Mass Party specified democratic socialism as its ideology, but it was not a direct problem for the Social Mass Party to advocate reformist and to advocate democratic socialism. The accusation of military service originated from unification issues including the theory of permanently neutral unification, and the establishment of relations with North Korea, represented by North-South exchanges and North-South negotiations, was a direct problem. The suspects in the Social Mass Party case were sentenced to heavy punishment and imprisoned for a long time. They did not even have a chance to make a comeback as the military regime continued. They were found not guilty through a retrial, but this fact was not known at all. The reformist parties that emerged in the Second Republic quickly disappeared due to the military regime and were forgotten in history.