Tag: defamation

Tatsuya Kato, a Japanese journalist accused of defamation against the South Korean president, walks into the Seoul Central District Court on Dec. 17, 2015, for his sentencing trial. The court found him not guilty, saying that while his article was inappropriate, it falls under the freedom of the press. Kato, former Seoul bureau chief for Sankei Shimbun, was charged with defamation against President Park Geun-hye for his report in August suggesting that she was with her personal confidant when the passenger ferry Sewol sank on April 16, 2014. The whereabouts of the president at the time of the tragedy are one of the criticisms leveled against the government by the family members of the victims and civic groups. The prosecution had demanded a 18-month prison term for the Japanese reporter. (Yonhap)

You would think she should just be happy she has refuge in the United States after being part of the Kim regime’s inner circle and would want to keep a low profile:

The US-based aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un filed a defamation suit in South Korea on Wednesday against three defectors from her reclusive homeland.

Ko Yong-Suk, who looked after Kim for years when he was at school in Switzerland, said the three defectors, who escaped the North and settled in South Korea in the 1990s, were guilty of repeatedly “spreading false information” about her and her family.

Ko took asylum in the United States in 1998 with her husband, and the suit was filed on her behalf by her Seoul-based lawyer, Kang Yong-Seok.

The younger sister of Kim’s mother, who died in France in 2004, Ko is seeking a total of 60 million won ($51,900) for remarks the defectors made on South Korean TV talk shows between 2013 and 2014.

Kang said the defamation allegations covered claims that Ko once managed a secret fund for Kim’s late father, Kim Jong-Il, that her father collaborated during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula and that she had plastic surgery after defecting to the US.

“The defectors made groundless remarks without really knowing about her life,” the lawyer told AFP.  [AFP via reader tip]

You can read the rest at the link.

Via the Marmot’s Hole comes this Wall Street Journal article from a Korean lawyer that gives you all the information you need to know in regards to South Korea’s highly criticized defamation laws:

A separate category of criminal defamation is criminal insult. This provides punishment up to one year in prison or 2 million won in fines. Unlike criminal defamation, criminal insult involves no statement of fact, but simply generalized epithets. To establish criminal insult, the insult needs to be: (1) made publicly (i.e. the same “publicity” requirement as criminal defamation); (2) directed to a specific individual, and; (3) objectively damaging to the social reputation of the insulted individual.

Further, even an insult that would in fact damage the reputation does not rise to a criminal level if, in the context of overall situation in which the insult was made, the statement is not outside of the bounds of social norms. For example, the Supreme Court in 2008 held that a golf caddy who complained about her boss on the Internet by calling him “pitiable” and “pathetic,” was not guilty of criminal insult. Among other reasons, the ruling was given because the level of her insult was quite light and it was made in the context of complaining about workplace conditions—both of which were within the social norms.

All in all, the full contour of Korea’s criminal defamation laws shows that it to be less outrageous than one may think. The law is hardly a license to punish every nick and cut caused by everyday speech. Although horror stories on the Internet regale in claiming that “truth is not a defense” in Korean criminal defamation, the truth had better be actually defamatory before any punishment is meted out.

One can easily think of many circumstances in which even a true fact about a person can lower social esteem, in a way that does not impinge on the public interest. If, for example, Person A has an embarrassing venereal disease, what would justify the actions of Person B who, intending to harm Person A’s reputation, widely publicizes that true fact?

Because the standards for criminal defamation are fairly strict, Korea’s prosecutors frequently decline to indict after receiving the criminal complaint. Even if the prosecutors do indict and the case moves forward, more than 90% of  cases are dismissed or result in the prosecution’s defeat. (The author’s opinion is that the Korean government’s case against the Sankei’s Mr. Kato will fail as well because of the “public purpose” defense.)  [Wall Street Journal]

I highly recommend reading the rest at the link, for those interested in this topic.