Suit Over Yomiuris Dokdo Report Dismissed

Court Falls Short of Clarifying Whether Report Is True or Not; Case to Be Appealed

By Do Je-hae

Staff Reporter

A Seoul court dismissed Wednesday a lawsuit filed by a group of Koreans against a major Japanese daily that printed remarks it alleged were made by President Lee Myung-bak on Korea's easternmost territory, the Dokdo Islets.

A key reason behind the dismissal, the court said, was that the plaintiffs had no direct relation to the report in question, but it fell short of clarifying whether the report was true or false.

The plaintiffs collectively sought 400 million won ($352,000) in compensation from the Yomiuri Shimbun over a report about comments Lee allegedly made during a 2008 summit with then Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda regarding the sovereignty of Dokdo.

The Yomiuri reported that when Yasuo told Lee that his government had decided to refer to Dokdo as Japanese territory, Lee did not protest the decision itself but instead told Fukuda that "the timing was not right" and asked him to "wait" before announcing the change.

The Seoul Central District Court dismissed the suit, saying the plaintiffs were not personally affected by the report and therefore, none of their interests were damaged.

"The legal interests of the plaintiffs were not violated as they were not mentioned in the report," the court said in the ruling. "The report in question did not defame the plaintiffs."

The ruling said that if anyone felt violated by the report, it should have been Lee himself.

Case Not Over Yet

Its decision is seen as a victory for Cheong Wa Dae, which has consistently maintained that Lee did not make any remarks that could be interpreted as undermining Korean sovereignty over Dokdo.

But the plaintiffs said they will appeal.

"The court failed to make a clear judgment on the veracity of the report," said Lee Jae-myung, the plaintiffs' lawyer, in a briefing after the ruling was handed down. "We will immediately seek an appeal."

The litigation was brought by a group of 1,886 Koreans in August last year, claiming their personal pride and self-esteem were damaged by what they call Yomiuri's "groundless report."

Yomiuri's front-page article on July 15 claimed that President Lee Myung-bak virtually agreed to let Dokdo be marked as part of Japanese territory in new guidance manuals for secondary school teachers in Japan during the meeting with his Japanese counterpart.

Cheong Wa Dae has denied the report, calling it groundless and saying Japan's foreign ministry also acknowledged it as untrue. "The report is entirely false as we have confirmed again and again," presidential spokesman Park Sun-kyu said in the latest statement on the issue.

But the conservative Japanese daily has insisted that the Korean President made the comments and that this was confirmed through "multiple sources involved in the summit."

Yomiuri has refused to elaborate on the sources and submitted copies of similar articles by the progressive Asahi daily and a monthly Japanese magazine to the court as evidence backing the credibility of its report.

Opposition party leaders have requested President Lee to apologize, calling the alleged comments serious enough to warrant impeachment.