South Korea's Supreme Court ruled that calling someone an "X-man" during a dispute at an apartment residents' meeting does not constitute criminal insult.
According to legal circles on the 10th, the Supreme Court's Second Division (presided by Justice Eom Sang-pil) recently overturned a lower court ruling that had fined apartment building representative A 500,000 won for insult, remanding the case to Incheon District Court.
A and B had been active in an emergency committee for prospective residents at an apartment complex in Jung-gu, Incheon since April 2019, and were each elected as building representatives. The two came into conflict over accounting matters and other issues. A was investigated for telling residents C, D, and E in April 2019 that "B is an X-man. He could be someone receiving benefits from the construction company, so always be careful and wary."
In July of the same year, A called resident F multiple times, saying "The X-man in the emergency committee is G (B's online community nickname). Now that I think about it, all the puzzle pieces fit together and I'm getting chills." Two days later, A was also accused of telling residents D and H at his home that "B is the construction company's X-man."
The first trial found all three instances of A's remarks guilty and imposed a fine of 700,000 won. The second trial also found that the expression "X-man" constituted insult. The court ruled that "X-man is an abstract judgment or expression of contemptuous emotion sufficient to diminish the evaluation of the victim's personal worth, and it is appropriate to consider this as insult." However, the court found the April remarks difficult to prove as a crime and sentenced A to a fine of 500,000 won.
The Supreme Court, however, reversed the lower court's judgment. Considering the dictionary definition and everyday usage of the word "X-man," the court found it did not rise to the level of criminal insult.
The Supreme Court stated that "the expression 'X-man' is an abstract expression frequently mentioned in daily life and media to sarcastically refer to someone helping opposing forces within an organization, and is used relatively lightly." The court indicated that even though A's use of the expression while raising suspicions about B put B in a position of having to explain himself, this circumstance alone was not sufficient to conclude that it damaged B's external reputation.
