Court orders lawmaker to pay W5m over false claim about ex-rights official

A court has ruled that Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Seo Mi-hwa made false statements when she claimed in a media interview that former National Human Rights Commission of Korea standing commissioner Kim Yong-jae had made threatening remarks during a committee meeting, ordering Seo and the outlet that published the interview to pay Kim 5 million won ($3,730) in damages.

According to legal sources, Judge Shin Mi-jin of the Seoul Central District Court's Civil Division 201 ruled on Sept. 18 that Seo, a journalist and a media company jointly pay Kim 5 million won in a damages suit he had filed against them.

In a media interview in July 2024, Seo claimed that Kim had made an intimidating remark during the commission's deliberations on the so-called yellow envelope bill, warning that "something unimaginable will happen" if things did not go his way.

The court found the claim to be false. The commission had deliberated on and voted on the yellow envelope bill before Kim was appointed as a standing commissioner, meaning he had not taken part in those proceedings. The court said the false statement was capable of damaging Kim's social reputation.

The court said Seo could have known the claim was inaccurate had she checked the commission's plenary meeting minutes before giving the interview. It also held the journalist and media company responsible for publishing her remarks without independent fact-checking.

Seo's side argued that Kim had in fact made threatening remarks at a different meeting and that citing the wrong agenda item in the interview was a minor, incidental error. The court rejected this, finding that the other remarks cited by Seo's side also could not be characterized as threatening or as conveying a harmful intent.

Seo's claim of parliamentary immunity for the interview remarks was also rejected. The court said that even though the interview was conducted at the National Assembly members' office building to vet a candidate for the commission chairmanship, it could not be considered an act ordinarily incidental to legislative speech or voting on the Assembly floor.

However, the court declined to award damages for a separate part of the same interview in which Seo described Kim as someone who "moves with the winds of power," ruling that this amounted to a subjective value judgment.

The court found that parliamentary immunity did apply to remarks Seo made at a Democratic Party caucus meeting in September of that year, in which she said Kim had opposed the yellow envelope bill and a special bill on the Itaewon crowd crush and had rejected an emergency relief measure for Col. Park Jung-hoon.

Kim had originally sought 70 million won in damages from Seo and others. Both sides appealed the first-instance ruling.

A separate damages claim Kim filed against former commission chairperson Song Du-hwan over past remarks was dismissed. The court said it could not conclude that Song's statements constituted false facts.