"I Only Sold the Wiretapping App": Company Head Who Earned KRW 3.3 Billion Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison... Supreme Court Rules "Accomplice in Illegal Recordings"

Supreme Court: "Selling Wiretapping Apps and Managing Servers Constitutes Accomplice Liability"

Seven-Year Prison Sentence and KRW 1,974,000,000 Forfeiture Finalized

The Supreme Court has issued a final ruling that the head of a company responsible for selling illegal wiretapping and surveillance applications (apps) and for managing the recording server should be held accountable as a co-principal offender for the buyers' illegal call recording activities. The rationale is that this is not merely a case of being an accessory, but of having committed the crime together as an accomplice.

Yonhap News Agency

According to the legal community on October 4, the Second Division of the Supreme Court (Presiding Justice Oh Kyung-mi) recently upheld the original verdict sentencing Choi, the head of the surveillance app company, who was indicted on charges including violating the Protection of Communications Secrets Act and the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization, to seven years in prison, a five-year suspension of qualifications, and the forfeiture of KRW 1,974,000,000.

From January 2019, Choi was put on trial for running an illegal surveillance app operation and conspiring with buyers to record 119,713 phone calls between other parties without their consent. The app worked by being secretly installed on the surveilled person's mobile phone, with the app icon and notifications hidden, and automatically transmitting real-time call contents, location information, and text messages to a server. Choi and others advertised using keywords such as "cheating husband" and "lawsuit against the other woman," collected monthly usage fees of KRW 500,000, and ultimately gained unlawful profits of approximately KRW 3,396,000,000.

During the trial, Choi argued that he was merely an accessory, claiming, "I only sold the app and provided the server; the illegal recording was done directly by the buyers."

However, both the first and second trial courts rejected Choi's argument, recognizing all charges and sentencing him to seven years in prison, a five-year suspension of qualifications, and the forfeiture of KRW 1,974,000,000. The court ruled, "Choi provided the app containing eavesdropping functionality, managed a separate server that automatically stored recording files, emphasized the monitoring feature in advertisements, and instructed on how to install it secretly," determining that this constituted co-principal liability ("functional dominance over the commission of the act") rather than simple accessory liability.

The Supreme Court also found no error in the lower court’s interpretation of the law and thus dismissed Choi's appeal, finalizing the conviction.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.