South Korean Supreme Court rulings on insult crimes

The Supreme Court of Korea has issued rulings clarifying the legal boundaries of the crime of insult, specifically regarding online speech and profanity.

In one decision, the court overturned a conviction involving profanity used in a community group chat, ruling that such language does not necessarily constitute an insult crime. The justices distinguished between expressions that merely hurt feelings and those that damage a person’s social reputation, stating that using profanity to convey negative or critical opinions does not meet legal requirements for insult unless it specifically infringes upon external honor.

In a separate case, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's conviction of an individual who called a band leader a ‘thug’ (yang-a-chi) in an online comment. While lower courts had previously fined the man, the Supreme Court ruled the remark was an “unrefined expression of negative or critical opinion” regarding a political stance rather than an attempt to cause extreme humiliation or infringe upon personal dignity. The court emphasized that criminal punishment should be applied cautiously to coarse or unrefined expressions.