Super Junior's Choi Siwon has taken a legal action against malicious commenters online.
On the 3rd, it was confirmed that Siwon has filed lawsuits against individuals targeting him with malicious comments. He actually managed to unmask these anonymous users by getitng their private personal information directly through a U.S. court.
According to an exclusive report by Sisa Journal, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California officially granted Siwon's application for pretrial discovery on the 2nd. This legal approval targets 10 specific anonymous users across overseas platforms like X and Youtube.
If you aren't familiar with the term, discovery is a legal proedure that allows someone to gather evidence they need from the opposing side or third parties before the actual trial starts.
Since these platfoms are based in the U.S., Siwon's legal side petitioned the U.S. court to order them to hand over the users' real names, dates of birth, and addresses. His lawyers sargued that because the comments were written in Korean and the account data pointed overseas, there was no reason to believe any of these anonymous users were American citizens or living in the U.S.
The U.S. court completely agreed and granted his request. The judge explained that the First Amendment's free speech protections do not apply to foreign citizens living outside the U.S. Since the malicious comments targeted a South Korean resident and there was no proof the accounts belonged to Americans, the court ruled that ordering the companies to share the user data would not violate anyone's constitutional rights. Now that Siwon has obtained this private information, he can easily move forward with his lawsuits and claim damages in South Korea.
So, how did this whole mess even start? According to court records, Siwon had been dealing with a constant wave of malicious comments ever since former President Yoon Sukyeol declared martial law back on December 3.
The online attacks got much worse in February after Yoon Sukyeol was sentenced to life in prison during his first trial on insurrection charges. Right around that time, Siwon posted a Bible verse on his social media alongside a Chinese idiom that means, 'The unjust will inevitably perish, collapsingcompletely like crumbling earth and shattered roof tiles.'
The public viewed this as a political statement. While it sparked a lot of controversy, it also led conservative Youtuber Jeon Han-gil to pulicly speak up and express support for Siwon.
After that post, X and Youtube were flooded with thousands of hateful comments attacking Siwon's political views, religion, appearance, and career. Some netizens left comments like 'Leave Super Junior,' 'If you want to do politics, become a politician,' and 'Are you clinging to the idol title just for the money?', while others took low blows by attacking his religious beliefs.
Siwon was clearly not having it. By May, he filed a civil lawsuit against 10 of these individuals at the Seoul Central District Court, seeking major damages for defamation and insult.
His agency, SM Entertainment, is fully supporting him. In February, SM Entertainment released a statement, saying:
"We have recently confirmed the continued and repeated posting of malicious content, including personal attacks and insults, targeting our artists. We take these matters very seriously."
The agency also added that they will continue to collect evidence of the creation and distribution of false information, as well as posts that mock their artists across online communities and social platforms. After reviewing everything, they plan to gradually expand their criminal complaints and legal actions against anyone targeting their artists.
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