10
The Supreme Court next inquired whether the news media’s crime reporting is a matter of public
interest which prompts exemption from liability for libel. "Generally speaking, the media’s coverage of
crimes places the crimes in perspective and informs what the social norm is and what punishment is
meted out against the violation of the norm," the Court said. "The crime news reveals the sociocultural
environment of crimes and explores various social responses to the crimes. It plays a role in providing
information for the formation of public opinion. Thus, the mass media’s news reports on crimes can be
viewed as a matter of public interest."
53
The Supreme Court, however, refused to recognize a "public interest" element in the news
media’s disclosure of the identities of criminals or crime suspects: "News reports on crimes do not
necessarily require the explicit identification of criminals or crime suspects. The reports about the
criminals or crime suspects are not always a matter of public interest which those on crimes ought to
be."
54
Under this standard, the Court ruled that the news stories about Yu did not concern a matter of
public interest. The Court reasoned that the public did not have a justifiable interest in learning that Yu
was a criminal because she was an "ordinary citizen and not a public figure in any sense of the term."
55
In June 1999, the Constitutional Court suggested factoring the needed distinction between a
public figure and a private individual into the balancing approach:
The balancing of press freedom and reputational protection under the Constitution must
consider all the following elements together: Whether the victim of the defamatory
expression of the news media is a public figure or a private figure; whether the
expression relates to a matter of public concern or belongs to a purely private realm;
whether the victim has created the danger of having his reputation injured; whether the
expression contributes to formation of public opinion and open debates as a fact of public
and social interest for citizens to know objectively (right to know).... The standards of
scrutiny should make distinctions between a public figure and a private individual and
between a matter of public concern and a matter of private concern. Further, restrictions
on defamatory expressions regarding the official conduct of a public figure like the one in
this case [i.e., a provincial assembly of Kangwon Province] should be more relaxed.
56
Professor Cha Yong-bom of Dong-A University in Korea called the Constitutional Court ruling
“an epochal milestone in the public figure debates” in Korean law because it “offered new criteria for
Korean courts in ruling [on libel claims] after sufficiently considering the value of press freedom.”
57
In
noting the impact of the Constitutional Court’s decision on Korean libel law, he said that Korean courts
recently issued “important” opinions in public libel cases in which they emphasized press freedom. “In
2001, lower courts indicated their attitude of appreciating the notion of public figure,” Professor Cha
Convention