Pro baseball’s Oh Ji-hwan indicted for malicious comments
Extraordinary fine for insulting 1.2 million won
89% are fines… Average 89 million won
Experts warn of increasing punishment
Social media and community movement without regulation
Information disappears after 6 months and cannot be traced
[이미지출처=연합뉴스]
[아시아경제 조성필 기자, 김대현 기자] “I couldn’t go to training because I was going to play overseas with that bitch.”
The burden of responsibility for this comment was a fine of 1.2 million won. The court sentenced last month. The accused is A in his 30s. In July of last year, I left this comment on an article about professional baseball player Oh Ji-hwan and his wife Kim Young-eun. was charged with contempt under the Criminal Code. It seems it was embarrassing. pleaded not guilty. The court did not accept it. He found the comment to be an insult and was convicted. A was dissatisfied. He has filed an appeal and is currently awaiting a second trial.
I didn’t write abusive language, but it’s an insult?
The gist of Mr. A’s argument in court was as follows. ‘I didn’t write abusive language, I just said what I wanted to say, how can it be a sin?’ A’s lawyer also said, “The comments are not enough to lower the social evaluation of the personal values of Oh Ji-hwan and his wife Kim.”
Under the Criminal Code, a crime of insult is established when you openly ‘insult’ someone. Through precedent, the Supreme Court stipulated that the term ‘insults’ referred to here ▲ does not state facts, and ▲ expresses abstract judgments or contemptuous feelings that may lower people’s social evaluation. However, there is an exception that if the expression does not violate social norms, there will be no punishment.
Judge Shim Byung-jik, the first detective of the Jeju District Court, the first trial court, did not see that the expression written by Mr. It was judged that using the words ‘bastard’ and ‘year’, which are derogatory for men and women, would not be an insult. However, in the comments, the false fact that ‘I couldn’t go to field training because I was going to play abroad’ became a problem. Judge Shim pointed out, “If people who did not know that false information was written in the comments, they could form a negative evaluation of the victims or reinforce the negative evaluation they already had.”
120 million won is unusual… ‘Post-regulation’ needs to be strengthened
Noh Gi-wan, a lawyer at Changchun Law Firm, who served as Oh Ji-hwan’s legal representative, said, “The fine of 1.2 million won is an unusually high fine.” He said, “In most cases of insults or defamation based on malicious comments, the fine is 500,000 to 700,000 won.” In fact, the Korea Criminal Policy Research Institute analyzed 376 first-instance judgments on online insults over a period of one year and six months from 2016, and found that 62% of them were convicted, and 89% of them were fined. The fine was an average of 890,000 won.
Lawyer Noh said, “The punishment seems too light compared to the actions committed by malicious commenters.” Experts also agree that it is necessary to strengthen ex post regulations such as punishment standards. Park Jong-min, a professor of media at Kyunghee University, said, “Pre-regulation of malicious comments is technically and legally difficult to realize, but ex post prescriptions are possible.”
The malicious comments that have been switched to social media… more difficult to investigate
As Naver and Daum, two major domestic portal sites, abolished sports news comments in August of last year, it is said that such post-regulation became more difficult. This is because malicious comments have been transferred to social networking services (SNS) and online communities that do not have the minimum regulatory mechanism. The reality is that it is difficult to investigate malicious comments on social media or online communities right now. Lawyer Noh said, “In the case of an online community where you can write comments without registering as a member, IP information disappears after 6 months, making it impossible to track.” In most cases, the parent company of SNS is foreign, so it is difficult to cooperate with the investigation itself. Even if they receive cooperation from the investigation, it is not easy to specify personal information due to the fact that only the e-mail address is required when registering.
At the Tokyo Olympics, there was also a lot of malicious comments towards the athletes. There was a feast of indiscriminate malicious comments centered on social media and online communities. As of the 6th, two days before the closing, there has been no news of the players taking legal action, including complaints against malicious comments. Professor Park said, “We need to be able to systematically receive compensation for post-mortem damage. As it is difficult for an individual to take legal action alone, celebrities such as sports players will need to support at the level of the association.”
By Jo Seong-pil, staff reporter gatozz@asiae.co.kr
By Kim Dae-hyun, staff reporter kdh@asiae.co.kr
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