Welfare facility employee filmed and circulated coworker’s ‘affair’ KakaoTalk messages ... despite claiming, “I told only one person”

[The Financial News] An employee at a child welfare facility who secretly filmed a coworker’s KakaoTalk conversation and circulated it to another employee received a deferred sentence on a fine.
According to legal sources on the 11th, the Criminal Single-Judge Division 2 of the Cheongju District Court’s Chungju Branch, presided over by Judge Kim Ju-hyeon, deferred sentencing A, who was indicted on charges of intrusion into an information and communications network and defamation, to a fine of 1 million won. A deferred sentence is a system under which sentencing for a minor offense is postponed for a specified period; if that period passes, the case is deemed dismissed.
A was brought to trial on suspicion of recording the contents of conversations in coworker B’s KakaoTalk account, which was logged in on a shared computer, and then sending them to another employee, thereby revealing B’s affair. The incident occurred in June 2024.
A reportedly denied the charges in court, saying, “I just happened to see the KakaoTalk conversation that had not been logged out of; I had no intent. I was also acting to respond to a coworker’s misconduct and protect a healthy work environment and the children at the facility.”
The court rejected A’s claim, because A had opened the chat window, checked its contents, filmed them, and shared the footage.
The court also found A guilty of defamation. It ruled that the element of public dissemination was met because the information spread to other employees, even if A had told only one coworker.
The court also ruled that the act could not be considered to have been for the public interest, noting, among other things, that A had not reported B to the head of the institution or a relevant association.
In determining the sentence, the court took into account that A regretted the invasion of privacy and had no significant criminal record since receiving a fine 15 years earlier.
The court ruled that “the contents of the KakaoTalk conversation concern the victim’s most private sphere,” and that there was no evidence the conversation affected B’s work conduct or care of the children.
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