소비자 운동으로서 집단적 항의전화걸기와 위력에 의한 업무방해죄

Abstract

This paper analyzes the lower court’s criminal decision regarding the ‘secondary boycott’ against three major newspapers. In 2008 many netizens as newspaper consumers opened a internet cafe for consumer boycott against Chosun, JoongAng and DongA daily newspapers and they organized the protest-calling movement to the enterprises that carried advertisements in those newspapers. The issue in the court’s decision was whether the associated protest call of many unspecified people is a crime of ‘interference with business’(Article 314 of Korean Criminal Code) or it should be guaranteed as ‘consumer movement’. The court decided that this case could not be protected under the guarantee of consumer boycott, so punishable under Article 314 of Korean Criminal Code. My criticism is as follows. First, the protest calling cannot be estimated as ‘threat of force’ under Article 314,even though the calling happened massively. The protest call against any enterprise should be allowed as ‘comsumer boycott or comsumer movement’. The right of consumer movement which is prescribed in Article 124 of Korean Constitution includes collective or associated boycotts. Second, I criticizes the court’s reasoning of discrimination between the primary and secondary boycotts. The ‘secondary boycott’should be guaranteed equally as the primary boycott. Third, I suggest that the Article 314 of Korean Criminal Code should not be applied to the consumers’boycotts without violence, because any boycott or movement without violence should be protected broadly as a constitutional right of consumer movement, whether individual or collective, whether primary or secondary.