Company infringed French man's portrait rights

A person’s portrait rights – the right to control the commercial use of his or her own image – doesn’t only pertain to one’s face, but the entire body, a court ruled Sunday.

The Seoul Central District Court ordered an online education company to pay a French man one million won ($942) for using a photograph of his body – but not his face – in an advertisement.

In 2012, the company downloaded a photo of the man, edited it to replace his head with a different person’s, and then published the advertisement.

The court said that although the man’s face was not shown, his T-shirt, which prominently featured the word “foreigner” in Korean, was enough for people to recognize him.