Court finds controversial on-line pundit 'not guilty'

(ATTN: UPDATES with appeal plan, reactions at bottom; RESTRUCTURES throughout)
SEOUL, April 20 (Yonhap) -- A Seoul court on Monday acquitted a controversial
on-line pundit accused of causing financial losses to the country by spreading
misleading information.
Park Dae-sung, 30, better known by his Internet alias "Minerva," was arrested in
early January and indicted on charges of spreading on-line rumors that the
government ordered local banks not to buy U.S. dollars as part of efforts to
stabilize the local currency.
The prosecution claims the posting in December led to dollar hoarding, forcing
the government to hurriedly provide $2 billion to stabilize the currency market.
The prosecution had sought an 18-month prison term.
"When considering all the circumstances, it is hard to conclude that Park was
aware the information was misleading when he wrote the postings," Justice Yoo
Young-hyun of the Seoul Central District Court said in the ruling.
The judge also said that even if Park had realized the information was false, it
could not be concluded that he had the intent to hurt public interest,
considering the circumstances at the time or the special characteristics of the
foreign exchange market.
Kim Gab-bae, Park's legal representative, welcomed the ruling as truly meaningful
as it was "based on evidence."
"It did not misinterpret the law to infringe upon the people's right to freedom
of expression," he said.
The court rejected the prosecution's argument directly linking the dollar
hoarding to Park's posting and said the specific amount of damage incurred by the
government could not be quantified monetarily, even if the defendant's posting
was partly responsible for the depreciation of the won at that particular time.
Minerva's sensational postings gained a massive following after he accurately
predicted the collapse of U.S. lending giant Lehman Brothers last year. He
followed up with a series of pieces criticizing the government's economic
policies that spread quickly through the Internet in one of the world's most
wired nations.
An official at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said they will
appeal immediately, arguing that the court failed to apply the law properly.
"The court misjudged by excluding objective evidence which proved that Park
recognized the information as misleading," the official said.
Reactions to the ruling were mixed, as Minerva's arrest has triggered a heated
debate over the boundaries of freedom of expression in cyberspace and a pervasive
consensus among the tech-savvy that President Lee Myung-bak and his
administration are tightening their grip over regulations governing the use of
the Internet.
"There is still a plethora of cases where authorities exercise excessive
investigative rights against those critical of government policies," said Park
Geun-yong, head of the judiciary monitoring team at the People's Solidarity for
Participatory Democracy (PSPD), a Seoul-based civic group.
"These kind of investigations should be stopped, based on today's ruling," he said.
Yoon Chang-hyun, head of the Citizens United for Better Society, a conservative
civic group, offered a different view.
"While we respect the judicature's ruling, there does seem to be difficulty in
proving the (defendant's) criminal intent in this case," Yoon said.
"It is true that Minerva posted writing that negatively affected South Korea's
financial market," he said. "We should refrain from lionizing Park as a
conscientious critic just because he was acquitted."
odissy@yna.co.kr
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