In its ruling on the case in which Korean language-related organizations and Korean language scholars filed a compensation lawsuit against Kookmin Bank (KB) and Korea Telecommunications (KT) for causing mental damage to those who love the Korean language by writing companies’ names only in English on their billboards, the Seoul Central District Court said, “Those companies broke a law stating that outdoor billboards should be written both in a foreign language and Korean, but they do not have any responsibility for compensating individuals whose pride in the Korean language is damaged because the pride is a social legal benefit.”

The court also said, “KB and KT violated a law requiring that outdoor billboards be written both in a foreign language and Korean side by side in a similar size, by writing their names only in English or in both languages, but with Korean in a much smaller size than English.”

The current outdoor billboard-related laws require billboards be written in Korean as well if they are written in a foreign language. Korean language scholars including Nam Young-shin and Korean language-related organizations such as the Korean Language Association and the King Sejong Foundation filed the lawsuit.

(Choi Kyoung-un, codel@chosun.com )