1. Overview of the case
a. Who did Barun Law represent? Barun Law represented Mr. A who was charged with the offence of defaming a victim by intentionally making false statements about the victim.
b. Background of the case: Alleging that the defendant Mr. A went to Mr. C’s place of business and showed a link to a new article and a picture of a signboard of a company (“Company X”), and said to Mr. C “Mr. A on the broadcast because he sold Chinese-made products disguised as domestic products,” even though Company X was not mentioned in the news article and had nothing to do with the content of the news article, the prosecutor charged Mr. A with defamation of the victim by making false statements to Mr. C and five others and implying that Company X was the company covered in the news article.
2. Decision
Uijeongbu District Court Decision 2022Kodan3542, dated February 16, 2024
3. Basis of the decision
(i) Regarding the facts allegedly stated by the defendant, the court held that it was difficult to find that the defendant said “Company X was on the broadcast” in light of the fact that five people, including Mr. C, stated differently about the facts allegedly stated by the defendant, and that the fact that the name of Company X or Mr. B did not appear in the news could be easily identifiable through a quick glimpse of the news article, but it was admissible that the defendant said “Company X is selling a Chinese-made product, which was on the broadcast, as ‘Product Y’”.
(ii) The court, as to whether the above facts allegedly stated by the defendant were false and whether the defendant recognized them as false statements, noted that whether the Chinese products in the broadcast were the same as Product Y sold by Mr. B was a decisive factor in determining whether the alleged facts were false or true, but the investigative agency did not seem to have conducted any further investigation into the truthfulness of the statements on the premise that the defendant had told Mr. C and five others that “Company X was on the broadcast”, and the evidence submitted by the prosecutor was insufficient to prove both that the alleged statements were false and the defendant made the statements with knowledge that they were false.
(iii) Finally, as to whether the defendant was guilty of factual defamation, the court held that, in light of the witnesses’ statements, the facts allegedly stated by the defendant could be said to be a matter of public concern and interest, as they could lead to a loss of confidence in the industry as a whole, and that the defendant’s statements to Mr. C and the five others were in the public interest for the purpose of detecting illegal acts, and that even if there was a personal purpose or motive implied, it was only incidental, making it difficult to exclude the application of Article 310 of the Criminal Code.
4. Our role and argument
On behalf of Mr. A, we examined five witnesses, including Mr. C, and argued that Mr. A did not state false facts as stated in the indictment, nor did he had any false perception, as he only said that “Product Y sold by Mr. B is the same product made in China in the broadcast”. Further, by submitting the notification of the customs’ investigation results regarding Product Y as evidence, and examining Mr. D, an operator of a company manufacturing products damaged by Product Y sold by Mr. B, as a witness, we argued that even if the facts allegedly stated by Mr. A are likely to infringe on the social value or evaluation of Mr. A, they are true facts and are in the public interest, and therefore, illegality is carved out of the alleged statements under Article 310 of the Criminal Code.
5. Significance of the decision
The decision is significant in that it reaffirms the legal principle that “in a case of defamation by false publication of facts under Article 307(2) of the Criminal Code, the prosecution must prove that the stated facts are those undermining a person’s social reputation, that the stated facts are false because they do not objectively conform to the truth, and that the defendant is aware that the stated facts are false.”
□ Attorneys in charge: Park Sung-ho, Baek Jong-deok and Sim Hyun-A
