This is a tough issue to take sides on because the South Korean defamation laws do make it harder for people to lie about people especially politicians, but it does limit freedom of speech. However, in such a wired country like South Korea lies spread and are believed very fast. The perfect example was the 2008 Mad Cow Crisis which was based on lies and ushered in laws directing people to use their real name on the Internet. It is definitely a delicate balancing act the South Korean government is playing with this issue:
Park Sung-su, a political activist, protesting in front of the Supreme Court in Seoul, South Korea, last month. The sign, in Korean, reads, “Bite it off, you dogs of power.” Mr. Park was freed in December after being jailed on charges of defaming the president.
In late 2014, months after 304 people died in the sinking of a South Korean ferry, a leaflet began circulating with a scurrilous rumor about President Park Geun-hye: that she had failed to respond swiftly to the disaster that day because she was having a romantic encounter with a former aide.
Was Ms. Park, the flier asked, now cracking down on her critics in an attempt to keep that scandal from coming to light?
For Park Sung-su, an antigovernment campaigner who had distributed the leaflet — and who is not related to the president (Park is a common surname here) — the consequences soon followed. He was arrested and later sentenced to a year in prison, on charges of defaming the president and staging illegal protests against his prosecutors. He was freed in December after eight months, when a court suspended his sentence.
No evidence supporting the rumor has been produced, and prosecutors said they had investigated and found it groundless. But however dubious the leaflet might have been, opponents of the government say Mr. Park became another victim of the very thing he was denouncing: the government’s use of defamation and other laws to silence its critics, which rights advocates say is on the rise.
Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee warned against South Korea’s “increasing use of criminal defamation laws to prosecute persons who criticize government action.” Freedom House, a rights group based in Washington, criticized “the increased intimidation of political opponents” under Ms. Park, who took office in 2013.
“The government is especially sensitive about defending the personal reputation of the president,” said Park Kyung-sin, a professor of law at Korea University who has researched the issue.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of expression. But defamation laws here carry penalties that include prison — up to three years for comments that are true and up to seven for statements considered false — if they are deemed not in the public interest. Critics say the distinction is vague and opens the door to abuse by prosecutors.
The government’s use of the laws against critics predates Ms. Park’s presidency. During the five-year tenure of her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, 30 such cases were filed, 24 of them criminal and six civil, according to People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, an influential South Korean civic group. But under Ms. Park, the trend increased considerably, with 22 cases filed in her first two and a half years in office, the group said. Of those, 18 were criminal prosecutions.
“They don’t seem to care whether they win these cases,” the group said in a recent report, noting that the officials often lose in court. “The real purpose is to create a chilling effect among people criticizing and scrutinizing the government.” [New York Times]
