by RUTH KIM
A South Korean man arrested and charged in 2012 for retweeting posts from North Korea’s official Twitter account was acquitted Thursday by South Korea’s supreme court, reports the Agence France-Presse in Seoul.
Park Jeong-geun, a 26-year-old photographer, was charged in 2012 with being sympathetic to the North after he retweeted the country’s Twitter posts, an act that authorities said they believed violated the South’s National Security Act. The strict anti-communist law bans South Koreans from any actions that are seen as praising or sympathizing with North Korea, since the two countries are technically still at war with each other.
Park argued that he had no political agenda and meant nothing more than to ridicule the North’s leaders when he retweeted its posts, one of which read, “Long Live General Kim Jong-Il.”
A district court initially handed Park a suspended jail term, but an appellate court later found him innocent. The supreme court upheld that decision, concluding that his actions “did not pose tangible threats to national security.”
The Agence France-Presse article pointed out that South Korea’s infamous anti-communist law has had “a chilling effect on freedom of expression,” a concern voiced by several human and civil rights groups.
And in case you’re a little surprised to hear that North Korea uses Twitter, the news agency reported that the isolated country has posted about 11,000 tweets since 2010, and has about 20,000 followers.
Photo via: NPR
