A man in his 40s who posted about his wife's fraud on social media in an attempt to find his runaway wife... 'not indicted'

When his wife disappeared, he was sued for posting 19 posts about his wife's premeditated crime on TikTok and YouTube.
Prosecutors say, “It’s a means to find a wife... overall, it’s hard to see it as ‘slander.’”

There was a case in which a man in his 40s was sued for defamation after posting about his wife's fraudulent behavior on social media in an attempt to find his runaway wife, but was sent to the police but not indicted by the prosecution.

It was confirmed that the Daegu District Prosecutors' Office Pohang Branch decided not to indict Mr. A, a man in his 40s, on charges of violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection (defamation) last January.

Mr. A was accused of defaming the victim by posting slanderous posts on social media a total of 19 times from early July 2023 to the end of May 2024, claiming that his Vietnamese wife, B, who had run away from home, had committed fraud against him.

Mr. A claimed that he had spent tens of millions of won on gifts at the time of his marriage, but that Mr. B had disappeared less than two months after the wedding, and that he had only written the article to find Mr. B.

The police who investigated this case reported that Mr. A was guilty of defamation and other charges and sent the case to him, but the prosecution decided not to indict him because he judged that there was no charge due to insufficient evidence.

Regarding the reason for non-indictment, the prosecution said, “Mr. A posted and reported on social media and the media that ‘Mr. B committed a premeditated crime,’ and the identity of Mr. B was made public to an unspecified number of people. There is room for some problem in the fact that Mr. A posted the photo without the permission of Mr. B.” However, “This is only a means to find his wife with the help of an unspecified number of people, and overall, it is difficult to say that he slandered Mr. B as an unscrupulous woman from Vietnam.” “There is no evidence to admit it,” he said.

Attorney Kwon Min-kyung of Daeryun Law Firm, who represented suspect A in this case, said, “For defamation to be established, the person involved in the act must be aware that the facts stated are false. At the time of writing the post, Mr. A was aware that he had actually suffered fraud from Mr. B, and it is interpreted that the prosecution judged this situation comprehensively.”

Reporter Son Dong-wook (twson@lawleader.co.kr)

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Man in his 40s who posted fraud on his wife on social media to find his runaway wife... ‘Not indicted’ (Shortcut)