1. The plaintiff's appeal is dismissed.

2. The costs of appeal shall be borne by the Plaintiff.

Purport of claim and appeal

The first instance court.

1. The reasoning for this part of this Court’s reasoning is the same as that of the corresponding part of the reasoning of the judgment of the first instance, and thus, this part is cited by the main text of Article 420 of the Civil Procedure Act

2. Judgment on the plaintiff's assertion

A. In the Plaintiff’s assertion, the part of the article stating that “G related persons proposed to purchase land higher than the market price (the Plaintiff and RC) price, but the last day, the Defendant offered that “G related persons would purchase the land price higher than the market price of the instant land, but there was no intention to accept the unfair demand.” The Defendant stated that “G related persons would purchase the land price higher than the market price of the instant land with the Plaintiff, etc., but the Plaintiff, etc. demanded the sale of the commercial building.”

Therefore, the plaintiff seeks publication of the correction statement in attached Form 1 against the defendant, and seek payment of KRW 20 million for damage compensation due to defamation.

B. Determination 1) In order to establish defamation by news report of the press of the relevant legal principles, there should be a specific statement of fact that may undermine the victim’s social assessment. Here, not only cases of directly expressing facts but also cases of indirect and rounding methods, the existence of a fact in light of the overall purport of the expression, thereby suggesting the existence of a fact, and thereby, there is a possibility of infringing on a specific person’s social value or assessment.

In addition, the issue of whether a newspaper’s article constitutes a tort by impairing another’s reputation shall be determined based on the overall appearance that the article provides to its readers, comprehensively taking into account the objective contents, the ordinary meaning of the used words, the connection method of phrases, etc. under the premise of the ordinary method of dealing with the article, under the premise of the overall purport of the article. This is the social trend that has become the background of the article.