An appellate court on Wednesday acquitted a deceased man of his charges that he spread groundless rumors on Park Chung-hee’s military regime 42 years ago.

At a park in Yeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, in October 1972, the man, surnamed Park, reportedly told his friends that “amendment to constitution (which was dubbed the authoritative Yushin Constitution) is a dictatorship.”

He was arrested and indicted as the martial law proclaimed by then-President Park Chung-hee allowed investigators detain those denouncing the regime without receiving warrants from the court.

A military-based district court sentenced the man to three years in jail on charges of violating the martial law. With the man’s appeal to a high court, he was handed down suspended terms ― 18 months in jail with probation of one year.

The man, who died aged 39 in 1982, has been recorded as a convict for the past four decades because of his 1972 conversation.

Park’s son, 50, applied for a retrial in August 2014 and the Seoul High Court finally cleared Park of the charges.

“Then investigators illicitly arrested (the man) without a warrant, which satisfied the reason for retrial,” the court said in its ruling.

Its verdict clarified that the defendant has only expressed his political view over the Yushin Constitution, saying that “it is not acknowledgeable that there was a necessity to crack down on such remarks with military power.”

On Oct. 17, 1972, Park Chung-hee, the father of incumbent President Park Geun-hye, announced a presidential special declaration. After that, Park dissolved the National Assembly, suspended the constitution and declared martial law. Universities were closed also. The press, public speech and newscasts were censored as the country was put under a state of emergency. Work was then begun on a new constitution, which was resolved in Oct. 27, 1972, by the emergency State Council.

The National Assembly was dispersed and the constitution was revised by Park. This paved the way for him to take authoritarian and lifetime power without any checks, called the Yushin coup.

Incumbent presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon, who is working for the Park Geun-hye government, was one of the key figures who established detailed stipulations of the dictatorial Yushin Constitution.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)