SEOUL — An economic commentator on the Internet who criticized and angered the South Korean government but commanded a huge following was freed from jail Monday after a court acquitted him of charges of using the Web to maliciously spread false information.
The arrest of Park Dae-sung in January and his 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 on South Korea of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.
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 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 he wrote them, Judge Yoo said.
In July and December, Mr. Park wrote that the government had banned financial firms and major companies from buying dollars in an effort to arrest the fall of the Korean won. The court determined that the statement had been false but not criminal.
The prosecutors of the case had demanded an 18-month sentence for Mr. Park, accusing him of “blatantly stoking fears among the people” during 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 have a week to appeal the verdict.
Mr. Park’s sudden fame and influence demonstrated the power of blogging in South Korea, which both boasts and laments one of the world’s most vigorous online communities.
Political parties have intensely monitored Mr. Park’s case and squabbled about it. 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 people 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 books on finance.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar