진보당사건 변론에 나타난 체제 인식과 변호사집단의 동향 (Lawyers and the Understanding of System in the Defense of the Case of Progressive Party of Korea)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국근현대사학회
· 수록지 정보 : 한국근현대사연구 / 101호 / 197 ~ 226페이지
· 저자명 : 박보영

초록

해방에서부터 4 ‧19까지의 국가만들기 여정에서, 가장 상징적인 정치사건으로 등장한 진보당사건의 법정공방은 ‘선택한 체제’의 ‘박제된 이념’에 던지는지식인 집단의 치열한 이의제기였다. 1심에서 최종심까지 35차에 이르는 공판에서 진보당 인사들은 한결같이 반공‧반일 주장을 굽히지 않았다. 총인원 26명에 이르는 변호인단은 검찰의 시대착오적인 반공 일색이 민주사회의 엄중한자유를 침해하고 있으며, 정작 변화 발전을 거듭하는 서구 자본주의를 제대로이해하지 못하는 무지를 드러내고 있다고 공격했다. 정부 수립과 사회적 건설의시기, 어떤 국가를 만들 것인가에 대한 완결되지 못한 답들에 의해 부딪히는지점들이 공판정에서 가감 없이 재연되었다. 요컨대 반공독재가 강요하는 반(反)평화적 국시와 후진적이고 경직된 자본주의 체제의 배타성에 대해 변호인단은 합법 정당의 강령과 세계 자본주의의 변화 추세를 근거로 치열한 공방을펼쳤다. 동시에 사법부의 독립을 위협하는 정치적 이슈마다 변호사집단은 재야법조인으로서 조직적 대응력을 키워나갔다.
진보당 사건을 비롯한 대형 정치 사건의 경험들이 변호사들에게 야성(野 性)-법치 민주수호자라는 자의식의 설정을 가능케 했다. 뚜렷한 집단문화나조직적 전통이 약했던 변호사들은 정치적 공안사건 변론을 통해 연대를 확인하고, 이승만 정권과 조용순 대법원체제에 대항하는 야당과의 연합전선을 형성했다. 혁명으로 돌출된 공간 안에서 법관선거제와 법관연임제 문제가 재론화되고 혁명입법으로 가시화되기까지 과정에는, 1950년대를 통과하며 정치적압력단체로서 체급을 형성하고 조직화한 변호사집단의 성장이 유의미한 영향을 미쳤다. 4 ‧19혁명이 열어놓은 정치적 공간 속에서 반(反)이승만이 곧 개혁으로 받아들여지는 대중적 열기에 편승하여 법률가집단은 혁명의 의미와 결실을 전유했고, 식민지 지배계층의 일부를 형성했던 것에 대한 일말의 원죄의식은 삭제되었다.

영어초록

The period between the independence of 1945 and April Revolution of 1960 was the first step in South Korea’s political experimentation in which the nascent nation built the legal system as the foundation of the First Republic of Korea. In these years, Koreans experimented and revised their aspirations by applying and interpreting laws. Immediately after the independence, the question of “what kind of state we should build” instigated the controversy over the superiority of each system of North and South among intellectuals across the ideological spectrum, which only led to the establishment of autocratic systems on both sides. The Korean intellectuals of the left and right had become aware of the old axiom that “democracy’s arch enemy was bureaucratic dictatorship.” The South Korean history had since been through the unstable period of the anti-communist dictatorship, Korean War, sporadic revolutionary eruptions. In terms of the rule of laws, there were prosecutors, justice, lawyers, and the numerous accused. One overriding issue was reunification. An undeniable national desire and fiercely contested concept, the reunification issue was omnipresent among all kinds of people at the time. This issue caused the case of Progressive Party (Jinbodang), a legal dispute that punished its members for the guilty of spy activities based solely on the doubtful —and later reversed — testimony. The courtroom of the Progressive Party case presented an arena where each individual’s “choice” was interrogated and contested —the choice that had repeated through the establishment of a separate government in South in 1948 and the war. The distorted laws stuffed the serious social and political thoughts on peaceful reunification and modified capitalism in the form of legal trials in which lawyers fiercely defended the accused. In the infamous trials, the original dispute had become an entirely different one through a series of illegal additions of indictments and merge of cases.
All the way through the total 35 trials, the accused of the Progressive Party consistently claimed their anti-Japanese and anticommunist credentials. Their 26 lawyers refuted the prosecutors’ indictments as an anachronistic anticommunist that not only violated civil liberties essential to any democratic society but also shamefully unfitted to the changing mechanism of western capitalist societies. Through the trials, the unaccomplished visions over what kind of state they wanted to create crashed with each other.
Also, the Progressive Party case, along with other major legal cases relating to political issues, provided the lawyers with a strong sense of identity as the guardian of opposition and constitutional democracy. Until these cases, the lawyers had not develop a shared sense of identity or organizational tradition.
By engaging themselves with such planned —often fabricated —public safety cases, they had come to develop the solidarity of each other and establish a collective front with the opposition party and again the Syngman Rhee regime and Cho Yongsoon Supreme Court. After the April Revolution of 1960, this alliance transformed itself into “Freedom Attorney,” a well-organized group that paved the way for lawyers to enter into politics. Amid the revolution, the Korean people tended to accept any kinds of anti-Rhee activism as a democratic reform. At this brief and unusual atmosphere, the lawyers appropriated the meaning and achievements of the revolution for their purpose. In doing so, they were easy to absolve themselves from their already vague sense of “original sin” as one who had consisted of the ruling elites during the Japanese colonial period.

참고자료

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