S. Korean court acquits Japan's journalist of defaming president

A South Korean court on Thursday acquitted a Japanese journalist of a criminal charge of defaming President Park Geun-hye.

The Seoul Central District Court handed down a sentence of acquittal to Tatsuya Kato, former Seoul bureau chief of Japan's conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper.

The ruling said that the defendant's article, though inappropriate, is included in the area of protecting freedom of press in a democratic society.

Kato was indicted in October 2014 for an article he wrote about Park's whereabouts on the day of the Sewol ferry tragedy, one of the country's worst maritime disasters that killed more than 300 passengers, mostly teenagers on a school trip.

In his article published online on Aug. 3, 2014, Kato picked up rumors circulating in the South Korean media and the financial industry that the unmarried president had been unaccounted for during seven hours after the ferry's sinking on April 16 to have a tryst with her former male aide who was married at the time.

The court ruled that Kato's article handling rumors on Park is defamatory of the president even though it was not aimed at slandering Park as an individual, saying that the rumors proved to be untrue.

Kato had been banned from leaving South Korea for eight months from August 2014 as some conservative South Korean civic groups filed complaints against him. South Korean prosecutors began questioning Kato in the month.

Prosecutors originally demanded an 18-month prison term in October, arguing that Kato intended to defame the president.