A Seoul court has ordered the government to compensate dozens of people who suffered abuse and punishment as a result of false accusations of spying for North Korea in the 1970s, officials said Wednesday. 
   
A total of 29 people, including Chung Dong-young, chief adviser of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, filed a lawsuit in 2012 seeking compensation from the government for mental suffering arising from their illegal arrest and detention. 
   
They were among some 180 people, comprised of college students and graduates, who were investigated in 1974 for supposedly organizing an anti-government entity masterminded by North Korea to overthrow Seoul's authoritarian government. One of them was put to death.
   
Overturning a lower court ruling, the Seoul High Court ordered the state to pay the plaintiffs 1.09 billion won (US$990,000) in compensation.
   
In 2005, the National Intelligence Service reviewed the case of the National Youth Association for Democracy, the democratic student group dubbed "Mincheonghaknyeon," concluding that it was fabricated by the authoritarian regime led by late President Park Chung-hee. A court acquitted them of all charges in 2009.
  
It is among the most infamous cases in which the Park regime falsely accused citizens involved in democratic movements of being pro-Pyongyang spies. Some of those accused of supporting the North were tortured or executed. 
  
Earlier this year, a lower court dismissed the lawsuit, citing the expiry of the statute of limitations. The court ruled that the victims should have filed the suit within the three years after 2005, when the spy agency announced its probe results.
   
The Seoul High Court, however, ruled that the statute of limitations should be applied on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that declared a 1974 emergency decree proclaimed by the military government of Park Chung-hee as unconstitutional, the officials said. 
   
"The Mincheonghaknyeon case is an illegal act by the state that did not fulfill its duty to protect the people's basic rights and invaded the dignity of the human beings," said Judge Kim Jin-wook in his ruling. (Yonhap)