Supreme Court Rules 'Simple Profanity' in Apartment Group Chat Does Not Constitute Insult

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of acquitting a defendant who was prosecuted for insult after referring to an apartment resident representative as a "son of a bitch" in a group chat room.

According to the legal community on August 14, Supreme Court Division 3 (Presiding Justice Lee Heung-goo) overturned the lower court's ruling, which had sentenced the defendant, A, to a fine of 300,000 won for insult, and remanded the case to the Seoul Northern District Court.

A was put on trial on charges of insulting B, the head of the apartment resident representative council, in April 2022 inside a group chat room with numerous apartment residents.

Upon learning that B had sent text messages describing the women's association president as a bad person to the apartment building representatives, A became angry and sent a message stating, "Such a person is a fabricator of rumors. Also, text messages are circulating saying the women's association president is worse [than a certain individual]. The content written by this son of a bitch..."

The first trial found A guilty and sentenced A to a fine of 300,000 won.

A argued that the expression was merely a minor and abstract remark that did not meet the constituent requirements of the crime of insult, but this was not accepted in the second trial either.

However, the Supreme Court reached a decision to acquit.

Reaffirming established legal principles, the Supreme Court stated, "If a certain expression is rude, discourteous, and capable of displeasing the other party, or if it uses minor and abstract expressions or profanity while expressing negative feelings toward the other party, barring special circumstances, it cannot be regarded as an expression likely to impair external reputation, thus failing to constitute the crime of insult."

The Supreme Court determined that the message sent by A was also a simple profanity expressing negative feelings toward B, which merely amounted to hurting B's subjective feelings rather than constituting an insult sufficient to lower B's social evaluation.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.