SUWON, South Korea — On May 1, 2007, the police locked Kim Myung-soo in a jail cell so small he could spread his arms and touch the facing walls. On one of those walls, a television was showing trains in North and South Korea preparing to cross the border for the first time since the 1950-53 Korean War. The report also noted that South Korea was donating 400,000 tons of rice to North Korea.

Mr. Kim was angry about his fate and confused by the reports of North-South conciliation. After all, he had been told his crime was “aiding the enemy” by running a Web site that sold used books deemed pro-North Korean. These included a biography of Karl Marx and “Red Star Over China,” an account of the birth of Chinese Communism by the American journalist Edgar Snow.

Although Mr. Kim was later released on bail, he is still fighting the charge in court. He has visited nearly every public library in Seoul and the surrounding metropolitan areas to bolster his argument that all the books seized from him as criminal evidence are readily available at government-supported libraries.

“It’s a tragicomedy,” said Mr. Kim, 56, whose acquittal in a lower court is being challenged by prosecutors in an appeals court. “It’s depressing living under a government like this.”