explained.
The company claimed it was filing three lawsuits against Breen, the
paper, and its top editor, each alleging $1 million in damages, along with a
criminal complaint that could lead to prison time. The newspaper agreed to
retract the article and issue an apology on the front page. Samsung later
dropped the lawsuit against the newspaper and the editor but pursued the
lawsuit against Breen.
Summoned for five hours of questioning by prosecutors, Breen was
defiant.
The prosecutor’s assistant went through each point in the article.
“Did you research and check your claim that every employee of
Samsung received the portraits?”
“The column is satire,” he said. “The whole point is these claims are not
true.” South Korea, though, didn’t have a tradition of public satire.
“If it’s not true, it’s not funny,” the prosecutor barked.
“Under Korean law,” Breen told me, “if somebody takes out a
defamation suit against you, they don’t have to prove that you’ve damaged
them. You have to prove that you haven’t.”
“You have to somehow try and assuage their [the defendants’] feelings,”
he said.
Breen explained his conundrum to the UK’s ambassador, sitting in the
pub in the basement of the British embassy.
The ambassador called Samsung CEO Lee Yoon-woo and tried to get
him to drop the case.
“His hands are tied” was the message the ambassador delivered back to
Breen. It suggested to Breen that someone higher on the food chain was the
true “plaintiff” bringing the suit forward. Korean activist groups appealed
to a visiting free-speech official from the United Nations.
Korean nationalists, however, failed to see why this petulant foreign
journalist was deserving of lenient treatment.
“Michael Breen Who ‘Mocked’ Korea, ‘Did He Even Apologize?’ ” read
one news headline.
Mike tried to remain low-key, hoping that the lawsuit would blow over
and Samsung would drop it. But eventually he realized the strategy wasn’t
working.
After four months, Mike gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times,