South Korean President Moon Jae-in Sued Mr. Koh Young-ju for Libel for Calling Him a Communist; the Prosecutor Wants to Jail Him; Suppression of Free Speech via Lawfare

2020-6-6, Tara O

President Moon Jae-in (문재인) sued Mr. Koh Young-ju (고영주) for damages (civil case) and charged him with a crime (criminal case) for libel and spreading “false facts,” because Koh called Moon a “communist.”  On August 23, 2018, Koh was found not guilty in the criminal court.  On June 2, 2020, the prosecutor, however, asked for a 1 ½ year jail sentence during the appeals at the Seoul Central District Court presided by Judge Choi Han-don (최한돈).   His sentencing is scheduled for July 9, 2020, 10:30 a.m.

What did Ko Young-ju Say?

Koh Young-Ju said “If Moon “is elected president, it’s a matter of time before our country becomes a communist country” in 2013 when Moon Jae-in was the presidential candidate for the Democratic United Party (DUP, 민주통합당), which is a predecessor of the Democratic Party of Korea (Deobureo Minjoo Party).  In September 2015, then-leader of the DUP Moon Jae-in sued Koh for libel and damage of ₩100,000,000 (~$85,000).  A month before in August 2015, Koh became the Chairman of the Foundation of Broadcast Culture, which is the board for Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC).  He was forced out with other members of the board soon after Moon became the president in a hostile manner by the National Union of Media Workers (under Korea Confederation of Trade Unions or KCTU), which is friendly to Moon Jae-in and his party.  For more on the hostile takeover of MBC, see here.

On September 28, 2016, Seoul Central District Civil Court Judge Kim Jin-hwan (김진환) ordered Koh to pay ₩30,000,000 (~$27,000 ) in compensation to Moon in a civil court.  It was appealed by both sides. (The decision was made around the time of the candle light protests for the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, when the courts became  increasingly politicized.)  On October 15, 2018, Seoul Central District Civil Appeals Court Judge Lee Won-beom (이원범) ordered Koh to pay ₩10,000,000 (~$9,000).

The prosecutor for the criminal charge was Prosecutor Lee Seong-Gyu (이성규) of Seoul Central Public Prosecutor’s Office Public Security Division 2.   Unlike the civil case, Prosecutor Lee did not begin investigations, but rather, waited until Moon became president.  Koh believes that it is difficult to not pursue a charge that is made by the president.  Prosecutor Lee asked the judge for a 1 ½ year imprisonment for Koh.  On August 23, 2018, Seoul Central District Court Judge Kim Kyung-jin (김경진) found Koh not guilty.  Many people, including Koh Young-ju, was surprised, not because it was a decision that supports “freedom of speech” as guaranteed in the Constitution of the Republic of Korea, but because the climate of the judiciary since the impeachment candlelight protests has been such that it took an enormous amount of bravery for the judge to make a decision that does not favor the Moon administration.  Subsequently, the prosecutor appealed the case, and on June 2, 2020, again asked for 1 ½ years of jail time for Koh.

In the early years of his life, Koh Young-ju was a public security prosecutor for 28 years.  In 1981, he investigated the “Burim incident,” which he says was not a democracy movement, but a communist movement. In fact, those involved in the Burim case admitted they were communists seeking to bring communism to the Republic of Korea.  They told Koh:

We are getting investigated by you now, but soon, communism will be here.  Then history will be rewritten and the records will change.  When communism arrives, we’ll be the ones judging you.

Koh believes that both former president Rho Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in, who worked with Rho, should know that “the Burim incident was a communist movement, because as their lawyers, they had to read their documents.”  In fact, Moon Jae-in admits that Rho Moo-hyun became radicalized after reading the materials in an interview on May 9, 2008 in a video titled “Lawyer who Makes Good Income and Burim Case”  (돈 잘 버는 변호사와 부림사건).  Moon said:

As their lawyer, [Rho Moo-hyun] read all their [his clients arrested in the Burim case] books, which were numerous…and I see that [through reading all the books], he had a change of beliefs on his own…After that, [Rho] defended various political cases, participated in underground movements, and directly participated in street protests…Our professors, lawyers… participated a lot with activist organizations.  We participated by helping financially from the background and also acting as shields, and defended them in courts when there were cases.

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It was revealed recently that the lawyer who appealed the 1981 Burim incident case in 2014 was Moon Jae-in. Moon also defended a group of radical students, who, in March 1982, set fire to the U.S. Cultural Center (부산미문화원 점거농성사건) in Busan as an anti-U.S. movement, which killed one student and seriously injured 3 students from the fire.  Moon also hails from Minbyun, notorious for its pro-North Korea acts, such as its efforts to send the 12 restaurant workers, who defected to South Korea, to North Korea against their will.

For more on Moon’s positions and the libel case, see here and here.

Suppression of Freedom of Speech and the Press and Blurring Separation of Power

A crucial aspect of this criminal defamation case against Koh Young-ju is how the courts are being used to suppress freedom of speech:  A judge issued a 6 month jail sentence, which was commuted to 3 years of probation, for libel to defector and author Lee Je-seong, who wrote about North Korea’s involvement in the Gwangju Uprising(“5.18” in Korean) in his book Purple Lake.  On May 13, 2020, a journalist was arrested for “fake news,” when he said on his YouTube channel that perhaps he [a Chinese man] died of coronavirus, when the man fell over and died suddenly while waiting to be tested for coronavirus in front of a clinic.  In another case, journalists Byun Hee-jai and Hwang Ui-won were jailed, because they challenged the false “tablet PC” claims that essentially instigated the candlelight protests that impeached sitting president Park Geun-hye in 2016.

The frequency and the severity of suppression of freedom of speech is getting more dire as the Moon administration continues.  There is a long list of cases of suppression of free speech and press here.

The erosion of separation of powers and checks and balances are also serious concerns.  The judiciary has become more about lawfare than rule of law, especially in the last 3 ½ years.  Lawsuits and criminal charges are brought against people who speak out against the ruling power or question its version of history.  The separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary branches is blurring more day by day.   This erosion of the separation of powers will  accelerate even more after a new special entity for investigating senior government officials, called Gongsoocheo (공수처), is created in mid-July.  This new entity mirrors North Korea’s Ministry of State Security in that it targets senior officials for control.  Many are afraid that this new entity will suppress judges and prosecutors in the name of “investigating corruption” in order to control their behavior and to remove people from the judiciary that do not support the Moon Administration. 

Aside from the checks and balances concerns, libel charges should not be used as a weapon to suppress free speech.  The case against Koh Young-ju, as well as other libel cases, should be dropped.