Economic Blogger Who Angered Seoul Is Acquitted * Sign In to E-Mail * Print *
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: April 20, 2009 SEOUL — A South Korean online economic commentator who criticized and angered the government but commanded a huge following was freed from jail Monday after a court acquitted him of charges of maliciously spreading false information on the Internet. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Lee Ji-un/Associated Press Park Dae-sung is greeted by his mother, Kim Chun-hwa, after being released from the Seoul Detention Center on Monday. The arrest of Park Dae-sung in January and his ensuing trial on charges of spreading false data in public with a harmful intent — a crime punishable by as much as five years in prison — prompted debate about how much freedom of expression should be tolerated in cyberspace in this extensively wired country. Mr. Park, an unemployed 31-year-old, gained an almost prophet-like status among many South Koreans after he correctly predicted the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, the crash of the South Korean currency — the won — and the effects of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis on South Korea. In some of the hundreds of online commentaries he posted under his pen name, Minerva, Mr. Park also unleashed scathing attacks on the government’s response to the global financial crisis. Some of his postings contained factual errors. The government accused him of undermining the financial markets. In acquitting Mr. Park, Yoo Young-hyeon, a judge at the Seoul Central District Court, ruled Monday that there was no proof that Mr. Park had “had the intention to undermine public interest.” It was also difficult to believe that Mr. Park knew that some of his statements were false at the time when he wrote them, Mr. Yoo said. In July and December, Mr. Park wrote that the government had banned financial firms and major corporations from buying U.S. dollars in a dire effort to arrest the fall of the Korean won — a statement the court Monday said had been false but not criminal. Prosecutors had demanded an 18-month sentence for Mr. Park, accusing him of “blatantly stoking fears among the people” in an economic crisis. Quoting from his writing, they accused the often-satirical blogger of advising people to hoard daily necessities in anticipation of runaway inflation and to “send children to orphanages.” “South Korea may be the only country in the world where a man is tried because he criticized the government’s foreign currency policies,” Mr. Park said in a statement before the judge on April 14. Prosecutors had a week to appeal the verdict. Political parties have intensely monitored and squabbled over Mr. Park’s case. President Lee Myung-bak’s governing Grand National Party has sought to regulate the country’s often unruly online forums, prompting opposition parties to accuse the government of trying to silence its critics. The main opposition Democratic Party on Monday called Mr. Park’s trial “an international embarrassment.” The government has denied wanting to suppress online freedom of expression, but it has long voiced concern about the influence of Internet rumors. Officials blamed online demagogues in part for huge protests last summer against U.S. beef imports that paralyzed the government for weeks. Before his identity was exposed, Mr. Park, as Minerva, had cultivated an aura of mystery, describing himself at times as an old farmer and at others as a former Wall Street financial expert. After he was arrested, many were surprised to learn that he was an unemployed graduate of a two-year community college who spent much of his time at home scouring the Web and reading mail-order books on finance.
