Busan police officer sued after being demoted for going to the gym 222 times on duty: “Shameless”

[The Financial News] A police officer who was caught visiting a gym more than 200 times during working hours and demoted won the first trial in a lawsuit to overturn the disciplinary action, but lost on appeal.
According to legal circles on the 15th, the Busan High Court’s Administrative Division 5, presided over by Judge Choi Hwan, said it had overturned the first-instance ruling in favor of the plaintiff and dismissed the claim in a lawsuit filed by Officer A against the chief of the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency to overturn the demotion.
An inspection found that Officer A had left the workplace without authorization and gone to a gym 222 times between 9 and 11 a.m. on weekdays from January 2023 to April 2024, while working as a team leader and in other roles at a police station in Busan. It also emerged that during this period, A had applied for a total of 12 hours of overtime on four occasions and improperly received 166,000 won in overtime pay.
The Busan Metropolitan Police Agency therefore demoted A, who held the rank of senior inspector.
A filed suit, arguing that obtaining the gym’s entry records and CCTV footage during the inspection without A’s consent violated the Personal Information Protection Act.
The first-instance court ruled that materials obtained by the police without the individual’s consent or a court-issued warrant were illegally collected evidence and could not be used as grounds for disciplinary action. It also overturned the demotion, saying that A’s statements based on those materials likewise could not be used as evidence.
However, the appeals court ruled that it was difficult to conclude that the police had violated the Personal Information Protection Act by obtaining materials from the gym and using them for disciplinary action. It explained that even if evidence was illegally collected, it was not automatically inadmissible in administrative litigation.
The court ruled, “The information concerns the movements and whereabouts of a police officer who was at a gym during working hours, and in light of the person’s status as a police official, it cannot be considered to have significant value deserving protection.” It added, “By contrast, the public interest in helping establish discipline among police officials by using the information as grounds for disciplinary action is not insignificant.”
The court also took into account that the gym voluntarily cooperated in submitting the materials and that it would have been difficult to verify specific usage records by other means.
On the severity of the disciplinary action, the court ruled, “The misconduct of repeatedly leaving the workplace was witnessed by complainants, resulting in damage to the credibility of the police organization.” It added, “The demotion cannot be considered so manifestly unreasonable by social standards as to constitute an excess or abuse of disciplinary discretion.”
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