Supreme Court: "Authors Can Be Punished for 'Sexual Disgust' Posts Even If SNS Account Is Blocked, If Victim Can Access Them"

Supreme Court Overturns Appellate Acquittal and Orders Retrial
"If the Other Party Can Recognize the Content, It Constitutes Delivery"

The Supreme Court has ruled that even if a social networking service (SNS) account is blocked, the author can still be punished if the victim is able to access posts causing sexual disgust without restriction.

Supreme Court, Seocho-gu, Seoul.

According to the legal community on September 8, the Supreme Court's First Division (Presiding Justice Shin Sookhee) overturned the lower court's acquittal of Mr. A, who was indicted for violating the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes (Indecent Acts by Using Communication Media), and sent the case back to the Suwon District Court.

Mr. A was put on trial on charges of posting content that caused sexual humiliation or disgust, such as "Let's do sexual torture," after specifically mentioning Mr. B's account using the "mention" function on Twitter in May 2023 during a dispute. Although Mr. B had blocked Mr. A's account at the time, so notifications for the posts were not sent, it was found that Mr. B accessed Mr. A's account using a separate account and viewed the posts.

The key issue was whether the posts uploaded by Mr. A could be considered to have "reached" Mr. B. Article 13 of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes stipulates that a person who causes sexually humiliating content to reach another person can be punished. The first and second trial courts reached different conclusions. The court of first instance fined Mr. A 2 million won. In contrast, the appellate court ruled Mr. A not guilty, stating, "Since Mr. B independently searched for Mr. A's Twitter account and became aware of the posts, it is difficult to view that Mr. B was objectively in a position to know of the existence and content of the posts."

However, the Supreme Court's judgment differed. The bench stated, "Article 13 of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes is intended to guarantee 'the right not to be exposed to sexually humiliating content against one's will,'" and determined that the requirement of "reaching" in this provision means "not only when the other person directly encounters sexually humiliating content, but also when the person is objectively placed in a position to recognize it."

The court further explained, "If the defendant transmits sexually humiliating content to the other party via communication media, and the other party is able to access the content immediately without any particular restriction, such conduct fulfills the requirement of 'causing the content to reach the other party.' Whether the other party actually recognized or confirmed the content is irrelevant."

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