News Analysis: Politicization vs. freedom of speech in acquittal of Japan's journalist defaming S. Korean president

Ties between South Korea and Japan, which showed signs of thawing after last month's summit between President Park Geun-hye and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are forecast to keep the mood for a while after a Japanese journalist was acquitted Thursday of the charge of defaming President Park.

The Seoul Central District Court handed down a sentence of acquittal to Tatsuya Kato, former Seoul bureau chief of Japan's conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper.

Kato was indicted without detention in October last year, for an article he wrote about Park's whereabouts on the day of the Sewol ferry tragedy, one of the country's worst maritime disasters that killed more than 300 people, mostly teenagers on a school trip.

In his article published online on Aug. 3, 2014, Kato picked up rumors swirling in the South Korean media and the financial industry that the unmarried president had been unaccounted for during seven hours after the ferry's sinking on April 16 to have a tryst with a married former aide.

Two days after the publication, some conservative South Korean civic groups filed a complaint against Kato, which led to the justice ministry's order barring Kato from leaving South Korea.

INTENTION TO POLITICIZE

South Korean prosecutors began questioning the conservative journalist from Aug. 18 and brought a libel charge against him two months later.

The Sankei is seen as an Abe-favoring right wing daily that has campaigned to annihilate Japan's apology for its wartime sex slavery of Korean women, or comfort women, who were forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

Kato met Abe a day after he returned to Tokyo with the lifting of an eight-month travel ban on April 14, 2015. "The meeting indicates that both the Abe cabinet and Kato intended to politicize the issue," a source familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, told Xinhua.

After his first one-on-one summit talks with Park in Seoul in early November, Abe told Japanese reporters that he delivered what Japan should claim as he was asked about whether he had brought up the Kato case at the talks, according to South Korea's Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper.

"That was intended to make the case a diplomatic issue," said the source. Abe apparently tried to use the case as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from South Korea in diplomatic talks about the wartime sex enslavement, the source noted.

Abe raised the Kato issue during his meeting with visiting South Korean lawmakers in Tokyo on Jan. 16, according to Japan's Asahi Shimbun. Abe was quoted as telling Suh Chung-won, a member of South Korea's ruling Saenuri Party who is close to President Park, that Seoul should respect freedom of expression and release Kato.

The Kato case "is not a matter to be made a diplomatic issue," a South Korean commentator said at a broadcaster YTN's radio program on Wednesday. He noted that it was a shenanigan for Japan to call the prosecution of Kato a suppression of the press as there were many cases in Japan involving defamations in articles.

The commentator said every country has its unique judicial system. In South Korea anyone who is convicted of defamation can be punished with up to seven years in jail.

Seoul's prosecution said in its closing argument on Oct. 19 that Kato had a sufficient motive for defamation after the presidential office barred him from entering Cheong Wa Dae due to a news embargo breach.

According to the prosecution, Kato's article defaming President Park came 12 days after he was indefinitely barred from entering the presidential office. Prosecutors demanded an 18-month jail term against him.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Dismissing the prosecution's argument, the Seoul court acquitted Kato of the libel charge. The ruling said that the defendant's article, though inappropriate to an extent, is included in the area of protecting freedom of expression in a democratic society given that the article was written for the purpose of public interests.

The court ruled that Kato's article was defamatory for Park as an individual because the rumors proved to be false, but it was not aimed at slandering the president as the article was meant to deliver reports on South Korea's political situations to Japanese readers.

The ruling noted that the article didn't defame Park as a public figure because it raised questions about the president's whereabouts when such an accident as the Sewol tragedy happened.

"It is clear for our country adopting a democratic system to regard the freedom of the press, essential to maintain and develop democracy, as important," the ruling said, adding that criticism over governmental officials should be guaranteed as much as possible because the constitution stipulates the protection of free speech.

In a way, Seoul also made a diplomatic decision as the foreign ministry delivered its stance to the justice ministry, asking to take into account the Japanese government's request for clemency in the Kato case.

A South Korean foreign ministry official was quoted by local media as saying that Japan's key government officials and politicians recently called for leniency in handling of the case, which they said would be a burden in improving Seoul-Tokyo relations.

The official said the acquittal will create an opportunity to improve relations between South Korea and Japan ahead of the 50th anniversary of a bilateral normalization treaty. Enditem