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A prison inmate who repeatedly filed information disclosure requests with the intent to harass public officials has lost a lawsuit seeking to overturn the police's decision to withhold the data.
According to the Korean National Police Agency, the Busan District Court's Administrative Division 1-3 dismissed all claims filed by an inmate identified as A in a lawsuit against the Busan Jin Police Station seeking the cancellation of the disclosure refusal.
In February, inmate A requested the full decision notices for all public information disclosure applications filed by citizens targeting the Busan Jin Police Station for the entire month of November 2025.
In response, the police issued a non-disclosure decision in March, stating that out of 108 cases decided during that period, 103 involved investigation-related materials, while disclosing the remaining 5 cases could infringe upon personal privacy or freedom.
A filed a lawsuit to contest this decision, but the court ruled that the information disclosure request constituted an abuse of rights.
The court determined that A had no actual intention of utilizing the information, but instead filed the requests simply to harass public officials.
As grounds for this decision, the court noted that the requested information had no relevance to A's legal status, carried the potential to include sensitive privacy details of third parties, and would require a substantial waste of administrative resources for the police to redact personal information from each document.
According to the Korean National Police Agency, A has filed 61 similar information disclosure requests with police offices nationwide over the past three years and has also filed 6 lawsuits contesting non-disclosure decisions.
Cases where individuals contested non-disclosure decisions through lawsuits, similar to A, totaled 34 over the past three years, including 6 cases in 2024, 14 last year, and 14 this year.
Among these lawsuits, the police have won 23 cases, while 7 cases are currently ongoing.
The Korean National Police Agency stated, "We plan to maximize the guarantee of the public's right to know while preventing the unnecessary waste of police administrative resources, thereby focusing on our core mission of protecting the public's life, safety, and property."
(File Photo: Yonhap News)
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