By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter
A Korean Twitter user was charged with violating the election law, the first time since the nation's election watchdog said last month that it would crack down on unlawful political activities carried out through the poplar online social media.
The cyber crime investigation department of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said Friday that they booked Kim, 43, nicknamed "doa" on Twitter, without physical detention for conducting an illegal poll and making the result public.
This is the first time for the police to charge a Tweeter for violating election law.
Twitter is a social network service using short messages under 140 characters and the National Election Commission (NEC) introduced the same guidelines for the service as emails.
According to the police, Kim conducted a survey on support for parties and a Gyeonggi Province Governor candidate from Jan. 19 to March 26 through Twitter and Twitpol, a Twitter-related online poll site. He also made the survey results public, breaking the Election Law.
The law stipulates that poll takers must clarify the details of political surveys such as the respondents, methods and sample size.
Kim asked his "followers" to distribute the result of the opinion poll - he has some 14,000 followers, police added.
An officer said the NEC warned Kim to delete the tweet in question several times, but he refused to do so until investigated.
Kim said he would file a petition with the Constitutional Court over the matter.
"I was booked without detention and may only have to pay a fine. However, I would like to undergo a formal trial and consider appealing to the nation's highest court to prove my innocence," Kim said on Twitter.
Some lawmakers, including Rep. Chung Dong-young of the opposition Democratic Party, are also seeking revision of the election law concerning Twitter, saying the law is outdated.