Supreme Court overturns stalking conviction over lack of repeated acts

The Supreme Court on April 16 overturned a lower court's stalking conviction, ruling that two isolated incidents separated by more than two months failed to meet the legal requirements for continuity or repetition. The high court sent the case back to the Changwon District Court for retrial.

The court found the proof of continuity and repetitiveness insufficient because the two acts were each brief and occurred with a gap of approximately two and a half months between them. The defendant was accused of following a victim's vehicle for about 10 minutes over a distance of 3 kilometers while driving a van, and then approaching the victim again about two and a half months later to take photographs after making an illegal U-turn.

The justices deemed the first act, lasting roughly 10 minutes, and the second, lasting about six minutes, too short to be considered continuous conduct that inherently causes anxiety or fear. Furthermore, the court noted the time gap lacked the temporal proximity, spatial connection, or unity of intent needed to view the separate events as a single, ongoing pattern of harassment.

According to the ruling, a stalking crime requires acts that cause anxiety or fear to be either continuous or repetitive. Continuity is defined as conduct that persists for a considerable duration, even if it occurs only once. Repetitiveness requires multiple acts to share a close relationship in terms of temporal proximity, location, and intent.

The decision clarifies that sporadic, discontinuous acts do not automatically qualify as stalking crimes under the current statute. Such actions may be punishable as separate offenses depending on their specific content and severity, but they cannot be aggregated to meet the threshold for stalking without evidence of a sustained or closely linked campaign.