For example, consider an employer who has failed to pay wages, where the workers inform the press of the unpaid wages. If the fact of unpaid wages were protected as privacy, then, since criminal acts are carried out away from others' eyes and are not voluntarily disclosed, all of them would have to be protected as privacy. Yet in Korea, disclosing the fact of unpaid wages is also subject to criminal punishment as defamation by stating facts. Of course, where, while disclosing the unpaid wages, separate personal information such as the employer's address or family relations is disclosed, a separate sanction for infringing privacy would be needed. But the existence of defamation by stating facts, even though it lies outside the scope of privacy protection, suppresses freedom of expression by preventing the fact of unpaid wages itself from being revealed.

Since Korea does not yet clearly have separate civil or criminal provisions protecting privacy, Article 307(1) of the Criminal Act can be used. For example, there was a case in which a person who violated the Public Official Election Act identified the informant who had reported him to the election commission and disclosed it to his fellow party members, and he was punished under Article 307(1) of the Criminal Act. In such a case, where there is no separate criminal provision punishing invasion of privacy, applying that provision to protect an informant's identity, which should be protected as a secret, is considered appropriate. However, applying Article 307(1) on the ground of defamation rather than invasion of privacy can create the problem of "false reputation." Therefore, if Article 307(1) of the Criminal Act is to be maintained with the aim of protecting privacy, there is a need to narrow the provision's scope of application, either by legislation or by an accurate interpretation by the Supreme Court.

The system of punishing defamation by stating facts collapses the basis for the free existence of individual thought by punishing the utterance of facts. If a claim that has emerged as fact through competition in the free marketplace of ideas is restricted because it lowers another's reputation, that competition becomes useless and the free marketplace of ideas loses its reason to exist.

In Korea, discussion continues on whether defamation by stating facts must be punished criminally even though civil remedies such as damages are available.

In 2006, the European Court of Human Rights reviewed cases in which journalists who criticized the government or politicians were criminally punished for defamation, and decided that imposing prison sentences for defamation is an excessive penalty because it restricts the public's right to know and freedom of the press. The reason the abolition of the crime of defamation by stating facts under criminal law continues to be discussed is probably that, in most countries, criminal defamation is abused to maintain the government regime. Thanks to it, those in power can suppress criticism from the press or the public with taxpayers' money rather than their own. Therefore, in defamation-by-stating-facts suits concerning public officials, constitutional freedom of expression should be emphasized more, so that even where public interest has not been proven as a ground for excluding unlawfulness, if the content concerns a fact related to the public interest and there was a justifiable reason to believe the stated fact was true, unlawfulness should be excluded, emphasizing the role of public officials as a public duty.

The core of freedom of expression is not "the freedom to say what others like to hear," but "the freedom to say even what others do not want to hear."

Whether to keep or abolish the crime of defamation by stating facts is a representative constitutional issue in which freedom of expression and personality rights collide head-on, so it is regularly covered in constitutional law, criminal law and media law assignments and debate classes. Comparing the Constitutional Court's 2021 decision upholding constitutionality and its dissenting opinion, and the public-interest standard of Article 310 of the Criminal Act, with this material's arguments for decriminalization lets you complete a well-grounded paper from either side. In particular, the logic distinguishing privacy protection from reputation protection can be applied to various cases such as celebrity reporting, online reviews and whistleblowing, which is also useful for broadening the issues in a debate presentation.