A defendant indicted for insult after cursing at the son of an acquaintance during a land dispute has received a ruling from the Supreme Court in favor of acquittal. The reasoning was that if the insults were heard only by family members, the "publicity" element required for the crime of insult cannot be recognized.
According to the legal community on the 10th, the Third Division of the Supreme Court (presiding Justice Lee Heung-koo) recently overturned a lower court ruling that had sentenced A, who was indicted on charges of insult, to a fine of 500,000 won, and sent the case back to the Daejeon District Court.
The defendant, A, was summarily indicted on charges of cursing at B, the son of an acquaintance, in May 2023 during a dispute over a "land boundary" issue, saying, "What the XX are you? Are you that XX's kid?" A subsequently refused to accept the summary order and requested a formal trial. A summary order is a judgment issued by a court in cases involving relatively light punishments such as fines and minor fines, without a formal trial, based on records submitted by the prosecutor.
The first trial court sentenced A to a fine of 1 million won, stating, "In light of the victim's consistent testimony that two neighboring residents were watching when A cursed, and the fact that A cursed on an open street in broad daylight, it is sufficiently recognized that A publicly insulted the victim."
The second trial court said, "It is insufficient to find that A cursed at the victim in the presence of 'two neighboring residents,'" while adding, "It is sufficiently recognized that A's parents and the victim's father (who were at the scene at the time) heard the insults." The second trial court found that "considering that A's parents have no special relationship with the victim and constitute an 'unspecified number of people' in relation to the victim, or even if not, constitute a 'specified few' with the possibility of dissemination, the publicity of the insults is recognized." However, accepting an appeal that the lower court ruling was too heavy, it sentenced A to a fine of 500,000 won, lighter than the first trial.
But the Supreme Court found that the crime of insult was not established for A, and reversed the case in favor of acquittal. Article 311 of the Criminal Act (insult) stipulates that "a person who publicly insults another shall be punished by imprisonment or imprisonment without labor for not more than one year, or by a fine not exceeding 2 million won." According to Supreme Court precedent, "publicity" refers to a state that can be perceived by an unspecified number of people or a large number of people. Publicity can be recognized even if a remark was made to a small number of people, if there is an objectively recognized possibility that the recipient will disseminate it to an unspecified or large number of people. However, it is Supreme Court precedent that making a remark only to a specified few can be a strong circumstance for denying publicity.
In A's case, the Supreme Court judged, "The only people who heard the insults were the victim's father and the defendant's parents, and from the standpoint of A's parents, the possibility of disseminating the insults to those around them is not high," adding that "it is insufficient to recognize publicity beyond reasonable doubt."
