South Korea’s Supreme Court has ruled that photos of text messages and other files taken from a spouse’s mobile phone can be used as evidence in a civil lawsuit over an alleged affair, even if the material was collected unlawfully.
The ruling draws a line between secretly recorded conversations, which remain inadmissible under communications privacy law, and phone images used to prove claims in civil litigation.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that partly sided with a plaintiff who filed a damages suit against three people, including a person accused of having an extramarital relationship with the plaintiff’s spouse.
While going through divorce proceedings in 2019, the plaintiff installed a recording device in the spouse’s car and secretly recorded conversations between the spouse and the alleged affair partner.
The plaintiff also gathered evidence by photographing text messages, photos and videos stored on the spouse’s mobile phone.
The plaintiff was later found guilty in a separate criminal case on charges including violations of the Protection of Communications Secrets Act.
At issue in the civil damages case, filed in January 2022, was whether the recordings obtained from the car and the photos taken from the spouse’s phone could be admitted as evidence.
The Supreme Court rejected the admissibility of the audio recordings, citing communications privacy law, which bans recording private conversations between other people and bars such recordings from being used as evidence.
But the court took a different view of the phone photos.
Although the evidence was obtained in violation of the Information and Communications Network Act, the court said unlawfully collected evidence is not automatically excluded in civil litigation, where judges have discretion when weighing evidence.
The court said admissibility should be decided on a case-by-case basis by balancing the personal interests of the other party against the value of finding substantive truth.
Relevant factors include the nature of the case, the circumstances of the unlawful act, the type and extent of the rights infringed, and the need and urgency of securing the evidence.
The court acknowledged that the evidence inevitably involved private matters, but found that the privacy and personal interests of the defendants had not been seriously infringed in light of the nature of the dispute.
It also said the evidence was highly necessary to prove the alleged affair, and that the need to secure it was urgent because divorce proceedings were underway at the time.
The Supreme Court therefore upheld the lower court’s conclusion that the defendants were liable for paying damages over the affair.
(This story was created with the assistance of AI. — Ed.)
hnpark@heraldcorp.com
