Tag: defamation

Just another example of the crazy defamation laws in place in South Korea:

Would it be defamation if the face of a customer who took goods without paying at an unmanned store was publicly attached to the store?

In this case, the court said, “It constitutes defamation.”

According to the legal community on the 28th, Judge Gong Woo-jin of the Incheon District Court’s Criminal Chamber 14 sentenced A (43) to a fine of 300,000 won for the owner of an unmanned stationery store accused of defamation.

Mr. A, who runs an unmanned stationery store in Jung-gu, Incheon, released a photo on November 7, 2022, showing a young customer who took goods in a bag without paying at his store.

It was released by attaching a picture of a child taken on a closed-circuit (CC) TV screen to the store, and it was put on trial when parents accused A of defaming the child.

A said, “I’m looking for a child who took a figure (model doll) worth 23,000 won and 11 Pokemon cards without paying four days ago. If you know this child, please contact me,” he said.

The court ruled that if A does not pay a fine, 100,000 won will be converted into one day and detained at a labor center for three days, saying that defamation charges are established.

Maeil Kyeongchae via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.

Can you imagine how many US politicians would be sent to jail for defaming former Presidents if Korean defamation laws were implemented in the US?:

Deputy National Assembly Speaker Chung Jin-Suk was convicted Thursday of defaming the honor of late President Roh Moo-hyun with his derisive remarks about Roh’s tragic death.

Judge Park Byung-gon of the Seoul Central District Court sentenced the fifth-term lawmaker of the ruling People Power Party to six months in prison, a ruling heavier than the prosecution’s demand for a fine of 5 million won (US$3,793). He was not taken into custody immediately.

If the sentence is confirmed by the Supreme Court, Chung will lose his parliamentary seat. 

The charges against Chung stem from a post he made on his Facebook account in September 2017, commenting on Roh’s suicide death in May 2009 amid a corruption investigation.

Chung claimed Roh’s wife, Kwon Yang-sook, and their son had received millions of dollars in bribes from a businessman close to the president.

He further claimed that following an investigation by the prosecution into the allegations, a domestic dispute ensued between the couple and she left their home. On that night, Roh, left alone, took his own life, Chung wrote.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this conviction against reporters who disclosed the affair of a USFK civilian worker:

South Korea’s top court on Tuesday confirmed the conviction of three weekly magazine reporters who were accused of publishing an extramarital affair story involving a Korean civilian worker at United States Forces Korea (USFK).

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling, fining them 3 million won ($2,800) each for defaming the worker.

The court rejected the reporters’ claim that their reporting was justifiable in light of people’s right to know and the freedom of press.

It said the disputed story dealt with a “sheer private affair” whose publication did nothing for public interest. The court said the story was published with personal details edited out, but not enough.  [Korea Times]

Can you imagine if the US had South Korea’s defamation laws?  The journalists in America would all be broke from lawsuits.

This is definitely the stupid thing I read all day:

A court has fined a man, 73, who spread a false rumor online that Lee Hee-ho, widow of late former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, planned to marry American hip-hop musician Andre Romelle Young, better known as Dr. Dre.

Seoul Western District Court fined the man 5 million won ($4,400) on Friday on charges of cyber defamation and defamation against the deceased.  [Korea Times]

I don’t know what is stupider the fact that someone would actually believe Dr. Dre would marry Kim Dae-jung’s elderly widow or that fact the person who published the blog was fined $4,400 for posting it.

Via a reader tip comes this example of the absurdity that sometimes occur with South Korea’s defamation laws:

Korea’s Constitutional Court has ruled that saying “You are f—ing crazy” in English may be derogatory but not defamatory.

The ruling came after two men from an apartment building in Gyeonggi Province argued in May last year over the watering of flowers at a nearby garden. Lee, 62, and his neighbor, 43, sued each other for physical violence and false accusation.

The pair clashed again days later, after the neighbor failed to address Lee respectfully ― a social norm in Korea when there is a large age difference.

But when an apartment warden approached, the neighbor changed his tone and used honorifics to address Lee. The neighbor’s sudden change frustrated Lee and he said to himself: “You are f—ing crazy.”

The neighbor heard it and sued Lee for defamation. But prosecutors rejected the filing because, while admitting Lee’s criminality, it was hard to indict him based on the circumstances.

The issue was then referred to the Constitutional Court.

The court ruled unanimously, saying:

“‘F–ing’ elaborates ‘crazy,’ like ‘very,’ while ‘crazy’ has many meanings like ‘unnatural,’ ‘absurd’ or ‘passionate.’  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it is amazing that this went all the way to the Constitutional Court for a final ruling.

I have not read this book in question, but I have read The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, by Sarah Soh and based on facts undoubtedly there were women that voluntarily became prostitutes for the Japanese military.  Arguably most were forced into prostitution by Korean brokers who acquired girls sold off by their families or misled women into thinking they were doing other work. This same system was in place even after the Japanese military left and the US military entered South Korea:

A local court on Wednesday acquitted a South Korean scholar of defaming women who were sexually enslaved by Japan during World War II through her controversial book.

The Seoul Eastern District Court found Park Yu-ha, a professor at Seoul’s Sejong University, not guilty of the charges, saying academic freedom is a basic right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Park was indicted in November 2015 over her book, “Comfort Women of the Empire,” which has been accused by victims and some civic groups of disputing the coerciveness of the “comfort women” system.

Prosecutors said Park defamed victims by describing some of them as “voluntary prostitutes” or “comrades” of Japanese soldiers.

“The opinion rolled out in the defendant’s book can raise criticism, objection and could also be abused by those who deny the coerciveness of the comfort women system. But it is, in any case, a matter of value judgment that goes over the authority or ability that can be executed by the court under the procedures of criminal cases,” the court said.  [Yonhap]

You can read much more at the link.

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:

 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]

You can read more at the link.