September 18, 2025
SEOUL – A virtual idol group has won a civil case against a commenter who depreciated their looks online, in one of the first such cases related to the rights of celebrities exclusively using digitally created images to represent themselves.
The Goyang branch of the Uijeongbu District Court in Gyeonggi Province recently ruled in favor of the five members of the group, who accused the defendant of harming their reputation in the form of insult and requested compensation of 6.5 million won ($4,700) per person. While the defendant’s derogatory comment, posted on X in July 2024, targeted the virtual avatars representing the group members, the court recognized the real persons behind these digital characters and upheld their claim for damages.
The defendant claimed that the comments were targeted against fictional characters whose identities were not the same as the actual people behind the screens. The court, however, said an insult against one’s digital avatar should be regarded as libelous against the actual person.
“The victim should be specified for the crime of insult, but it does not necessarily mean (the victim’s) name or group has to be specified. The specification (of the victim) can be accomplished if the people who know about the victim are made aware who the insults are targeting, based on the expression and the circumstances,” the court said in its ruling.
The defendant was determined to have posted profanity against the group and the people playing the characters in the group, whose faces and identities are not made public.
“The avatar in the era of the metaverse is more than a virtual image, but a way of expression of the user, one’s identity and one’s way of communicating with society,” the court said in its ruling, adding that the defendant should compensate for the pain caused by one’s expressions of discontent.
But the court did not order the defendant to pay the full amount sought by the plaintiffs, saying the compensation should be 100,000 won per person.
The group appealed the case. It said the ruling is significant in setting a legal precedent in cases against an avatar, but raised issues against the amount of compensation.
A virtual idol is a form of musical act that has been growing in popularity in South Korea, referring to those represented by digital images whose movements and expressions are tracked through the motion capture technology of real people. The actual face and personal information of the people controlling the avatars are usually not revealed to the public, forming identities that are independent of their actual self.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
