[HanCinema's News] Police Confirm Investigation into Joo Jin-mo's Phone Hack
By William Schwartz | Published on
On January 15th the Cyber Investigations Department of the Seoul Police confirmed that they were looking into the hacking of Joo Jin-mo's phone. The official statement suggests that while the original crime was visited upon Joo Jin-mo, the focus of the investigation is on secondary victims to the hacking.
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Many non-celebrities had their images posted online without redaction in the Joo Jin-mo leak.
According to the Information and Communication Network Act section 70-1, defamation in this manner carries a legal penalty of up to three years in prison and a thirty thousand dollar fine. Deliberately false defamatory information exposed in this manner increases these limits to seven years in prison with a fifty thousand dollar fine.
The large number of victims in this case means the hacker will almost certainly face severe punishment if caught, regardless of whether Joo Jin-mo or Jang Dong-gun want to press charges. Though none of the released material from the cell phone hack clearly depicts illegal acts, the police consider the personal conversations and images of women in bathing suits that have been released to be sufficiently defamatory to those persons involved who did not grant their consent to the leak.
Written by William Schwartz
William Schwartz
Staff writer. Has been writing articles for HanCinema since 2012, having lived in South Korea from 2011 to 2021. He is currently located in the Portland metropolitan area. William Schwartz can be contacted via william@hancinema.net, and is open to requests for content in future articles.