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The defendant's appeal is dismissed.
Reasons
1. Summary of grounds for appeal;
A. misunderstanding of legal principles 1) The court below found the Defendant guilty of violating the Act on Promotion of the Use of Information and Communications Network and Information Protection, etc., as to all the text messages sent by the Defendant, although they cannot be deemed as an expression that may cause fear or apprehension to the victim.
2) As the lower court concluded the pleadings without undergoing lawful evidence examination, it shall newly examine the evidence in the appellate trial.
B. The sentence of the lower court’s improper sentencing (two years of suspended sentence in six months of imprisonment) is too unreasonable.
2. Determination
A. 1) Determination of the misapprehension of the legal doctrine regarding the assertion that all text messages did not arouse fears or apprehensions, is subject to punishment for repeatedly leading the other party to reach a code, text, sound, image, or picture that arouses fears or apprehensions through the information and communications network under Articles 74(1)3 and 44-7(1)3 of the Act on Promotion of the Use of Information and Communications Network and Information Protection, Etc.
Here, whether the phrase “the act of repeatedly reaching another person” constitutes “the act of repeatedly causing fear or apprehension” ought to be determined by comprehensively taking into account the content and method of expression that the Defendant sent to the other party, the relationship between the Defendant and the other party, the developments leading up to sending the text, the frequency of sending the text, circumstances before and after, and the other party’s situation (see, e.g., Supreme Court Decisions 2008Do4351, Aug. 21, 2008; 2013Do7761, Dec. 12, 2013). According to the evidence duly adopted and examined in the lower court and the trial, the fact that the Defendant sent the victim text messages as stated in the daily list of crimes in the indictment from July 15, 2015 to August 20, 2015, and the fact that “the act of causing fear or apprehension” is recognized as constituting “the act of killing the other party.”