Ex-president and his deputy ordered to pay 100 million won to former lawmaker

SEOUL, Dec. 7 (Yonhap) -- A court ordered Wednesday that former President Chun Doo-hwan and his deputy pay 100 million won ($88,800) in compensation to a former opposition lawmaker.

The Seoul High Court ruled that Chun and Lee Hak-bong, who served as a chief investigator in the martial law command in the early 1980s, are jointly responsible for compensating Lee Tek-don, the former lawmaker.

The move came six months after Chun filed to appeal a ruling that he pay 1 billion won ($888,000) in compensation to lawmaker Lee and Lee Shin-bom, another opposition lawmaker.

Lee Shin-bom and Lee Tek-don were sentenced to 12 years and two years in prison, respectively, in connection with a pro-democracy uprising in the southwestern city of Gwangju in 1980.

They were two of about two dozen key opposition figures, who were arrested on trumped-up charges of conspiracy of a rebellion and on violations of national security and martial laws by the military government led by Chun.

The two former lawmakers were cleared of the charges against them in a retrial in 2007 and filed a compensation suit against the government and Chun.

Chun, who took power after staging a military coup in 1979, brutally quashed the uprising. The bloody crackdown killed about 200 people and wounded 1,800 others, according to government data, though unofficial figures put the death toll at more than 2,000.

The High Court also ruled that the government is responsible for paying 200 million won in compensation to Lee Shin-bom.

Chun, who has claimed to have only a few hundred dollars left under his name, was not immediately reached for comment.