2017No4245 Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection (Name)

Examples and Damage)

A

Defendant

Park Jong-dae (Court) and Kim Gin (Court of Justice)

Attorney H

Suwon District Court Decision 2017Ma610 decided June 22, 2017

November 10, 2017

The defendant's appeal is dismissed.

1. Summary of grounds for appeal;

In light of the overall purport of the Defendant’s comments, etc., defamation is not a statement of fact constituting a crime of defamation, but is an individual expression of opinion.

The Defendant, in dialogue with the president, etc. of the merchants' association, prepared the instant bulletin on the basis of the fact that he had heard, the article posted on the Internet, and the fact that he was Mad with the victim, and there was no awareness of false facts.

Since Sungnam-si prepared a notice of this case for the purpose of pursuing the public interest such as resolving the grievances of merchants with respect to those that have not been significantly changed even after four years since the establishment of the Seoul Metropolitan Area Revitalization Foundation, there was no purpose of slandering the victim.

Nevertheless, the court below found the defendant guilty of the facts charged of this case. The court below erred by misunderstanding of facts or misunderstanding of legal principles.

2. Determination

In full view of the following circumstances recognized by the court below and the court below's duly admitted evidence, the court below's judgment that found the defendant guilty of the facts charged of this case is just, and there is no error of mistake of facts or misapprehension of legal principles as alleged by the defendant. Therefore, the above argument

① The main contents of the instant publication written by the Defendant are the purport that the victim operated by the Defendant was entering into a contract for the event of e-mail exclusively with D and E, or one billion won or more, and the Defendant is not a publication in order to understand the authenticity of the aforementioned parts, but is deemed to have expressed an objection or a complaint under the premise that such facts were past or present. In light of the above, the Defendant may be deemed to have publicly stated the specific facts through the instant publication.

According to the evidence Nos. 1 and 2 submitted by the defendant, it is difficult to view that there was no complaint among the merchants in the J business district with respect to the part where the company operated by the victim was holding the event.

However, in light of the fact that the victim entered into a contract with D over three occasions from 2014 to 2016 in relation to the exercise of events, the contract amount is approximately KRW 150 million, the other companies held the event, and the total amount of the contract entered into in connection with E was exceeded KRW 81 million, and it is difficult to recognize that the victim was able to control the exercise of D, etc. only with the evidence No. 2 (record stating the contents of conversation with the chairperson of the merchant association and the wife) submitted by the Defendant, and that there was no other evidence to recognize otherwise, it is difficult to deem that the victim has given exclusive monopoly of the exercise of D and E, such as the posting of this case, or proceeded with the exercise of at least one billion won.

Nevertheless, the Defendant, on the sole basis of the merchant’s partial statement, posted a statement to the effect that an enterprise operating the victim has exclusively engaged in the event or has been holding the event more than one billion won, on several occasions, without undergoing a special confirmation procedure therefor. Therefore, it is reasonable to deem that it was false in fact at the time of the instant case.

③ The Defendant, at the police and the prosecution, stated that the Defendant had a doubt about how to utilize the business district revitalization fund equivalent to KRW 46.7 billion and intended to know about the use of the fund, or that the Defendant written the instant notice for the purpose of enabling the merchants of the revised business district to use the fund appropriately.

However, the Defendant stated in the notice of this case that the victim's company was attracting at least one billion won, and the amount is not only part of the above budget set as a business district revitalization plan, and as the Defendant stated in the prosecutor's office, it is difficult to see that the part inducing the exercise of the event is a major issue of the actual merchants by stating that the part inducing the exercise of the event is not the attracting of the event but the parking lot facilities for customers." In light of the above, it is difficult to see that the Defendant raised an objection with the main purpose of giving exclusive status of the exercise of the event to the business operated by the victim through the notice of this case. In light of the overall purport of the notice of this case, the number of publication and the method of expression, etc., it is reasonable to deem that there was a purpose of slandering the victim.

3. Conclusion

Therefore, the defendant's appeal is without merit, and it is dismissed in accordance with Article 364 (4) of the Criminal Procedure Act. It is so decided as per Disposition.

The judge of the presiding judge;

Judges Kim Gin-Un

Judges Yoon Sung-sik