All appeals by the Defendants are dismissed.

1. The summary of the grounds for appeal is that the Defendants, as the members of the Diplomatic Association, performed their duties for the public interest of the members of the collective ownership based on the decision-making and examination of the Diplomatic Order dated August 23, 2017 and the 25th order order. Since the Defendants did not refer to the victims, they did not intend to impair the reputation of the victims by pointing out false facts, or the Defendants’ act was dismissed as related to the public interest, and the lower court convicted the Defendants of the facts charged in the instant case, so it erred by misapprehending the legal principles and misapprehending the legal principles.

2. The crime of defamation does not necessarily require that a person’s name should be explicitly indicated in order to establish the crime of defamation, and where it is possible to find out whether a person’s name should be identified in light of the surrounding circumstances and the overall determination of the contents of the expression, the act of publicly expressing false facts that do not specify a person’s name constitutes defamation

(See Supreme Court Decision 201Do11226 Decided March 27, 2014 (see, e.g., Supreme Court Decision 2011Do1226, Mar. 27, 2014). In determining whether the facts alleged in the crime of defamation by a statement of false facts under Article 307(2) of the Criminal Act are false, if the overall purport of the alleged facts is different from the truth or are merely a degree of somewhat exaggerated expression, it shall not be deemed false, unless the important part is consistent with the objective facts.

Furthermore, it is difficult for an offender to know or prove that the matter was false from the outside due to its nature, and it is also possible to know or prove it out of the outside. Furthermore, the academic background, career, social status, timing of publication, and expected ripple effect of the offender based on the contents and the content of the published fact, the existence and content of the evidence, and the source and awareness of the fact expressed by the Defendant