Graphics = Song Yunhye
There have been cases of court judges copying typos from other rulings while writing rulings using the ‘copy and paste’ method, causing controversy. Sometimes the judgment becomes too long due to the ‘clumps’ of copy-pasting. In the legal world, it is pointed out that “copy-pasted rulings can be perceived as the result of a judge’s insincere trial, which can reduce trust in the ruling.”
According to our coverage on the 1st, the ruling issued by the Seoul Eastern District Court last month was almost identical to the Seoul High Court ruling issued in April of last year. The ruling by the Eastern District Court is that the families of Noh Sa-hong and the late Han Jae-bok, who participated in the Korean War during the Korean War but were captured by North Korea and escaped after decades of forced labor, suffered damages from the North Korean copyright royalties deposited in the court. It was a second trial ruling on a lawsuit filed to receive compensation. Additionally, the Seoul High Court ruling was in response to a second-trial lawsuit filed by the family of Choi, a police officer who was kidnapped by North Korea during the Korean War. In both rulings, the kidnapping military and police lost.
Graphics = Song Yunhye
The Eastern District Court ruling cited a paper and listed the author’s name as ‘Kim O-hyeon’. However, the author of this paper is ‘Kim O-heon’. This typo appears to have occurred because the Eastern District Court judge copied and pasted the relevant part from the Seoul High Court ruling. In the two rulings, the entire paragraph containing the paper and author’s name differs only by a few letters, but the rest is the same.
In addition, the Eastern District Court’s ruling was similar to the Seoul High Court’s ruling in the first two pages of the key ‘judgment’ section. The structure and content from ‘1)’ to ‘6)’ under ‘A’ were almost the same. As a result, the length of the two rulings was the same at 9 pages each, and the structure and expression of the main paragraphs and final conclusion were also the same.
The ROK military prisoners who lost in the second trial of the Eastern District Court received a confirmed ruling in July 2020 that “North Korea and Kim Jong-un must pay 21 million won each in damages.” To receive this compensation, a follow-up lawsuit was filed in December of the same year against the Inter-Korean Economic and Cultural Cooperation Foundation (Gyeongmunhyup), which manages North Korean copyright fees. The Gyeongmunhyup is depositing 2.85 billion won in copyright fees paid by domestic media for using North Korean broadcast videos with the court.
In response to this, the Eastern District Court pronounced the second trial ruling on the 14th of last month and ruled that “damage compensation cannot be collected from the Gyeongmoonhyup deposit.” The Gyeongmunhyup is said to have received only the authority from North Korea to conduct comprehensive preliminary negotiations with domestic individuals or organizations that wish to use North Korean works, and cannot pay copyright fees to outside parties.
Attorney Koo Choong-seo, who represented the South Korean prisoners of war in this lawsuit, said, “We received materials from the Ministry of Unification that purported to refute the Seoul High Court ruling, but the Eastern District Court did not make any rulings at all.” He added, “Even the typos in the Seoul High Court ruling were copied by the Eastern District Court.” “It was a ‘poor trial,’” he said.
There is criticism even within the court regarding the ‘copy-pasted ruling.’ When the Judicial Policy Research Institute under the Supreme Court conducted in-depth interviews with current judges to ‘improve the method of writing judgments,’ they said, “There are a lot of typos in the legal principles.” Answers such as “I copied and pasted it as is,” “I just paste it in chunks,” and “I copied and pasted too much,” etc. came out.
One high court judge said, “There was a judge who made a mistake while copying and pasting a paragraph from his own judgment and inserting it into another paragraph.” In the ruling order (main text), it must be written that ‘the plaintiff must pay 100 million won to the defendant by the O day of the O year, the O month.’ However, it is said that the first trial judge made a mistake by copying the part written in the reason for the decision, saying, ‘It will be said that there is an obligation to pay.’ The high court judge who heard this ruling at the appeals court said, “It is a problem that this ruling was not corrected and was uploaded to the second trial as is.” According to the ‘2023 Judicial Yearbook’, an average of 18,462 applications were received each year between 2013 and 2022 to correct typos in rulings.
A former court president said, “You can refer to judgments in similar cases, but it is difficult to copy and paste even typos.” He added, “The court must consider the feelings of the parties to the case, conduct the trial in good faith, and write the judgment accurately.”
2024-03-01 19:40:47
#단독 #bereaved #family #anxious.. #Judge #copied #pasted #typos #similar #rulings
