Hook: Let’s stop pretending the law is sacred. Today, a dead man “wins” in court—58 years after the government murdered him. Are you proud? You shouldn’t be. Truth is, every system built to protect you has the potential to destroy you—and sometimes, it does so with applause from the crowd.

Conflict: Let’s rip the bandage off: the exoneration of a South Korean man executed in 1966 isn’t a heartwarming tale of late-blooming justice. It’s a horror story. It’s the confession that righteous societies aren’t just prone to error—they are addicted to it. We love the myth of progress, the fantasy that blind institutions humbly right their wrongs. But what about irreversible crimes? Can we resurrect the executed? Can we un-widow a wife, un-orphan a child?

This is not about 'closure.' This is about how the state’s God complex demands sacrifice—one innocent at a time. What’s 58 years? What’s a human life, when the machinery needs oiling?

Fuel: 58 years. Generations changed. A reputation smeared, a spirit snuffed out for the theatre of National Security. Every time we look away, shrug, or call it 'history,' we become accomplices. We cheer for 'justice served' and trust the system—until the system feasts on someone we love. The executioner gets a pension while the executed gets a footnote. Now some judge scribbles an apology in the margins of genocide and calls it progress. Feel good yet?

No, this isn’t just South Korea’s past. Look in your own backyard: for every wrongful conviction overturned, how many corpses lie unpardoned under the soil of state power—America’s death rows, China’s show trials, Russia’s gulags, your neighbor’s quiet disappearance?

We want faith in institutions, but reality demands suspicion. Justice delayed? No, justice *destroyed—*replaced by bureaucratic pageantry. Our laws aren’t holy. They are human: corruptible, violent, hungry. The next victim could wear your face.

Impact: Which side are you on? The side that trusts a state with the power to kill, or the side that knows every knee bent to authority is a coin tossed into the gallows’ collection plate? The lesson here isn’t forgiveness—it’s rage. We should demand abolition, not apologies. Rituals don’t absolve murder.

Never again? That phrase is a joke without accountability. The dead man’s exoneration is a curse on all of us—the living who let the machine grind on, soothed by the myth that late justice is better than none. It isn’t. It’s the polite lie over a mass grave.

This article was inspired by the headline: 'South Korean man’s wrongful spy charges overturned, 58 years after execution'.