Crossbow-Shooter Inspires Criticism of Korean Legal System
By wchung | 05 Apr, 2026

Fabricated Evidence: A new movie adds fuel to heated discussions about corruption in Korea's judicial system.

The film Unbowed follows the true saga of an enraged professor who shot at a judge with a crossbow. The film has added fuel to online discussions about the corruption of South Korea's judicial system.

Many South Koreans are finding suspicions about their legal system validated by a newly released movie about an enraged professor who fired a crossbow at a judge.

Unbowed, released January 18, follows a 15-year legal saga that began in 1995 when professor Kim Myung-ho of Sungkyunkwan University pointed out an error in a math problem contained in the school’s admission test. The University fired Kim for slandering colleagues.

Kim filed a series of lawsuits seeking reinstatement but was unsuccessful. Kim appealed only to have the trial court’s verdict affirmed. Enraged at Judge Park Hong-woo who presided over the appeal, in 2007 Kim waited in front of Park’s house and shot at him with a crossbow. For that offense Kim was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted murder.

Upon his released in January of 2011 Kim, 55, and his attorney Park Hoon, 46, began posting discussions on various blogs that evidence had been fabricated in their case and questioning the integrity of Korean courts. The chief piece of evidence they cite is the fact that no blood stains were found on the judge’s dress shirt, only on his undershirt and the vest he wore over the dress shirt.

“The only reason we couldn’t find the bloodstains was because investigation agencies involved in the case fabricated the evidence,” says Kim in one of his posts. He and his attorney believe that, in fact, the arrow never actually hit Judge Park.

“[The shooting] was a justifiable means of protest for the Korean courts’ misjudgment,” Kim wrote in another post.

Those posts as well as the movie Unbowed have prompted heated online exchanges by various people involved in the trial, including Kim, Park, the lawyers and the judges. Those discussion have drawn a huge audience throughout Korea. Many have become convinced of Kim’s position that evidence had been fabricated, and support his calls for a retrial.

Legal observers point out that the charge of attempted murder doesn’t require an actual injury. Furthermore, the fact that the weapon used in the offense was never introduced at trial isn’t fatal to the conviction because the injury caused by the crossbow was supported by various medical evidence.

Even S. Korea’s Supreme Court weighed in on the movie Friday, dismissing it as a spurious effort by a disappointed litigant at undermining the public’s trust in the judicial system. The movie seeks to manipulate public sentiment by its use of scenes that show a biased perspective on key events, the Court added.

The main reason Kim and the movie Unbowed have generated such heated criticism about the judicial system are the highly publicized incidences of judicial and prosecutorial corruption that appear regularly in S. Korean media. A recent case involved a prosecutor who allegedly took a Mercedes Benz and a $4,500 Chanel bag to influence colleagues to go easy on defendants being considered for prosecution.