Japanese journalist cleared of defaming South Korea president

Tatsuya Kato, former Seoul bureau chief of Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper, was indicted in October previous year.

Kato’s story goes back to August 2014, when he published an article on the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun’s website questioning the South Korean president’s whereabouts in April 2014 during a tragic ferry accident where more than 300 passengers perished.

During the Abe-Park meeting in November, he suggested that bilateral ties will be in an “irreversible state” if Kato were to be found guilty, a separate government official said.

At the beginning of Thursday’s trial, Senior Judge Lee Dong-geun, presiding over a three-judge panel, read aloud a request from South Korea’s foreign ministry for the court to consider positively Japan’s appeal for leniency.

It added the freedom of the press “must be respected to the full” for the development of democracy, although the rumours over Park’s whereabouts turned out to be false.

Seoul prosecutors had demanded a guilty verdict and an 18-month jail term for Mr Kato, arguing he clearly meant to defame Ms Park.

The Japanese and South Korean governments are not to be deterred in going forward with coal-fired power projects despite the global momentum against fossil fuels witnessed at COP21 in Paris last week.

Park’s government came under massive public criticism for its botched rescue operation during the ferry disaster.

News 1 reported Japan’s National Public Safety Chairman Taro Kono said Friday he would strengthen security around South Korean diplomatic missions in Japan in the aftermath of the incident.

“I expect that it will have a positive effect on the Japan-South Korean relationship”, he said in Tokyo.

“President Park really wants to improve ties with Japan this year”, a source close to the president’s office said.

‘The defendant’s article was inappropriate to some degree but it falls under the freedom of the press in a democratic society considering it was written to serve public interest, ‘ the district court judge was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.

Similar sentiments were also shared in Tokyo, with even Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressing that he “appreciated” the ruling.

Relations between the neighbours are strained over what South Korea sees as Japanese leaders’ reluctance to properly atone for the country’s colonial wartime past, especially over the issue of Korean “comfort women”, as those forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II are known.