The late Moon Cheol-tae, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment in a fabricated spy case by the Agency for National Security Planning during the Chun Doo-hwan regime, was acquitted in a retrial held 41 years later.

The 13th Criminal Division of the Gwangju District Court (Presiding Judge Lee Jeong-ho) on the 10th acquitted Moon in the retrial on charges of violating the Anti-Communism Act and the National Security Act.

During the Chun Doo-hwan regime, Moon, who was working as a dispatched teacher from the then Ministry of Education (now the Ministry of Education) at Kumgang Academy in Osaka, Japan, was brought to trial on allegations of meeting with members of an anti-state organization, including the principal of a school affiliated with the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon).

Moon's life sentence was finalized in 1985; after serving 13 years in prison, he was paroled in 1998. He later suffered from the aftereffects of his long incarceration and died in 2018.

In 2024, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined that this case was a planned fabrication by the Agency for National Security Planning targeting Moon. The Commission found that when Moon refused a demand to work as an informant for the agency, investigators fabricated a spy case.

At the closing arguments hearing in the retrial, the prosecution requested an acquittal. The court stated that there was a possibility the defendant had been illegally arrested and detained and subjected to harsh treatment, and added that there was no evidence to support the charges.

Moon's son, who had studied in Japan, was also falsely labeled as part of a family spy ring and sentenced to seven years in prison. After the Commission's fact-finding decision, he was acquitted in a retrial this past January.