형법상 모욕죄에서 ‘모욕’의 개념에 대한 연구: 판례의 태도를 중심으로

Criminal complaints of insult are increasing due to the development of the Internet and the increase in discrimination and hate speech, and law enforcement agencies are suffering from dealing with a lot of insult cases. Moreover, it is difficult to judge whether the expression is the crime of insult. The Constitutional Court ruled that the Supreme Court offers an objective standard for interpreting the meaning of insult, so there is no cause for concern for a law enforcement agency to interpret it arbitrarily. However, criticism continues that the scope of insult is excessively broad and all negative or derogatory expressions could be punished and there seem to be many cases where the trial court, appellate court, the Supreme Court of Korea are divided over the insult crime cases. The court's judgments are also different from the trials and it appears to be difficult for an ordinary citizen to foresee what kind of acts are banned. This could be attributed to the difficulty of defining purely technical concepts of contempt in the legislation. Under these circumstances, the abuse of criminal complaints of insult and consequent criminal punishment could result in the weakening of the deterrent effect of criminal acts intended to be achieved through punishment. Therefore, I will examine the Korean and foreign countries’ legislations, history and the status of the provisions of the crime of insults, and comprehensively review the court decision on the concept of insults, provide implications to the investigation practices and find out ways for improvement.