A court has ordered the government to compensate a victim of the April 3 Jeju Uprising, marking the first such  restitution order for those wrongfully locked behind bars, more than seven decades after the incident.

According to the legal community on Tuesday, the Jeju District Court ruled earlier this month that the government should pay some 155 million won in damages to Kim Du-hwang in compensation for incarcerating him for 15-odd months on unfair charges decades earlier. 

The decision came eight months after the court acquitted him of violation of the national defense security law, acknowledging the 93-year-old Jeju resident was coerced by police in November of 1948 to make a false confession that he joined the Workers’ Party of South Korea. 

Kim was convicted on trump-up charges of aiding rioters and served his prison term through February of 1950, the court said. 

The amount of compensation took into account last year’s minimum daily wage level, 68-thousand-720 won. It was multiplied by five as stipulated by the criminal indemnity act for maximum compensation and then by 450, which is the number of days he was incarcerated. 

The Jeju Uprising took place amid deepening ideological divisions on the Korean Peninsula ahead of the Korean War and is estimated to have claimed the lives of as many as 30-thousand people, many of them civilians.