The nation's top court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of a 26-year-old man accused of retweeting posts sympathizing with North Korea's communist regime.
Park Jeong-geun was charged with retweeting tweets from a Twitter account maintained by a pro-North organization and posting other pro-Pyongyang writings on his Twitter account between December 2010 and December 2011, in violation of the anti-communist National Security Law.
A district court had sentenced Park to 10 months in prison with a two-year stay of execution, but an appellate court overturned the ruling, handing down a not-guilty verdict.
Enacted in 1948 to fight communism, the law bans any anti-state activities that attempt to praise, encourage or propagandize North Korean political ideals, and dissemination of material by anti-state groups.
Park argued that his intention of circulating hundreds of Internet posts was to lampoon North Korea's leaders as a joke. (Yonhap)
Park Jeong-geun was charged with retweeting tweets from a Twitter account maintained by a pro-North organization and posting other pro-Pyongyang writings on his Twitter account between December 2010 and December 2011, in violation of the anti-communist National Security Law.
A district court had sentenced Park to 10 months in prison with a two-year stay of execution, but an appellate court overturned the ruling, handing down a not-guilty verdict.
Enacted in 1948 to fight communism, the law bans any anti-state activities that attempt to praise, encourage or propagandize North Korean political ideals, and dissemination of material by anti-state groups.
Park argued that his intention of circulating hundreds of Internet posts was to lampoon North Korea's leaders as a joke. (Yonhap)
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