Court Dismisses Hoban Construction's Injunction Request to Ban KBS Broadcast... "Article Deletion Unusual"

Court: "Article deletion itself is highly unusual, and broadcasting its issues aligns with public interest"

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Gyumin] The court dismissed the injunction request filed by Hoban Construction against KBS to prohibit the broadcast of the program ‘Sisa Planning Chang’.

The Civil Division 51 of the Seoul Southern District Court (Chief Presiding Judge Hwang Jeong-su) dismissed on the 5th the injunction request filed by Kim Sang-yeol, chairman of Seoul Media Holdings, and Park Cheol-hee, CEO of Hoban Construction, against the KBS program ‘Sisa Planning Chang’. Following the court’s dismissal decision, the program is scheduled to be broadcast at 10 p.m. that day.

The court stated, “The core of this broadcast concerns freedom of the press, which falls under the public domain.”

Furthermore, the court explained, “The 57 articles related to Hoban Construction published in the newspaper were abruptly deleted without any official explanation or discussion, which is highly unusual in itself, and investigating and broadcasting the issues is in line with the public interest from the perspective of freedom of the press.”

Regarding the broadcast content including the ‘public land swarm bidding suspicion’ and ‘suspicion of illicit succession of management rights,’ the court said, “These are issues that have been consistently pointed out in the construction industry or corporate sector in our country,” and “It is in the public interest for the debtor to point out problems based on their own grounds through investigation.”

The KBS ‘Sisa Planning Chang’ episode titled ‘Who Deleted the Chairman’s Articles’ airing at 10 p.m. that day deals with the case where Hoban Construction, after becoming the major shareholder of Seoul Shinmun, deleted a large number of critical articles related to Hoban that had been reported by Seoul Shinmun.

Meanwhile, Seoul Shinmun deleted a series of investigative articles regarding Hoban Construction’s corruption allegations on January 16. In response, about 40 reporters issued a statement condemning the violation of editorial independence of the media company due to the major shareholder’s vested interests in the construction company.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.