A 73-year-old journalist was acquitted of charges he was sympathizing with North Korea for following the Hermit Kingdom’s Twitter account. The man was, however, sentenced to one year in prison, with two years suspended, for supporting the North through his own blog posts. The rulings were based on South Korea’s 1948 national-security laws, which ban its citizens from praising or sympathizing with Pyongyang. Had the man retweeted North Korean messages or mentioned their postings in his own tweets, the Seoul Western District Court found, he would have broken the law.
