The Florida Masochist: Blogger could go on trial for libel in South Korea

From the Metropolitician

In any case, I have doubts that my friend (our beloved friend, actually, over at ZenKimchi) will get a fair trial, since he's facing a criminal police investigation for libel, he has no lawyer (they be expensive, as he's found, in the range of about an Xbox 360 an hour), and the police will not allow him to bring his own interpreter (the police interpretation "provided" is pretty poor) even in the preliminary interview he is scheduled to go into next week.

He's basically going up against this obviously unscrupulous woman, her lawyer, and a judge in a legal system that basically favors, all other things being equal, the Korean side, from what I've seen and heard.

And things are not even equal.

I doubt his testimony will even be properly rendered; wouldn't it be fair to have him bring his own interpreter, who is more likely to correctly convey what he wants to assert than the police? In this case, there is a vested interest here in being biased, as it's his testimony. It's matter of both quality of interpretation and an obvious conflict of interest.

Whew.

I've asked for help from my blogging community before, but if any of you out there can offer some concrete advice or people to contact, or might even want to go in there and help out in a legal sense, it would be much appreciated.

Remember, even a Korean court has found that he was wrongfully deprived of about $6,000 in salary and she should have paid it. It's just right there in the contract. She was even penalized, as you'll see in Joe's own words below, and made to pay $2,000 extra to him in a previous decision. But as I've talked about before on this blog, even if you're telling the truth, the truth isn't much of a defense in Korea if you name names, even if you've got the documents and proof to back up your claims. That's what's gotten our friend into trouble.