A police officer who was demoted after leaving the post more than 200 times to work out at a gym won the case at trial but lost on appeal.
The Busan High Court's 5th administrative division, presided over by Judge Choi Hwan, overturned the lower court ruling in favor of the officer, identified only as A, and dismissed the officer's claim against the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency commissioner, legal sources said on the 15th.
Officer A was promoted to senior inspector in November 2022 and served as a team leader at a police station in Busan.
An internal audit found that between January 2023 and April last year, the officer left the workplace without authorization on 222 occasions to exercise at a gym between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. on weekdays.
During the same period, the officer filed four claims for a combined 12 hours of overtime and improperly collected 166,000 won in allowances, the investigation found.
The Busan police agency then issued a demotion.
Officer A contested the disciplinary action in court, arguing that gym entry records and closed-circuit television footage obtained during the audit without consent violated the Personal Information Protection Act.
The trial court sided with the officer, finding that material collected by police without the consent of the person involved or a court warrant constituted unlawful evidence and could not serve as grounds for discipline.
The court also declined to admit statements officer A made based on that material, and it overturned the demotion.
The appeals court reached a different conclusion.
The appeals court found it difficult to conclude that police violated the Personal Information Protection Act by receiving the material from the gym and using it in disciplinary proceedings. Even if material is collected unlawfully, it is not automatically inadmissible in administrative litigation, the court said.
"The information concerns the officer's movements and whereabouts, namely that he was at a gym during working hours, and given the standing of a police officer it cannot be seen as carrying great value for protection," the court said. "By contrast, the public interest in using it as a basis for discipline and thereby establishing service discipline among police officers is not small."
The court also took into account that the gym voluntarily cooperated in providing the records and that it would have been difficult to determine specific usage details by other means.
The officer's argument that the demotion was excessive was also rejected.
"The misconduct of repeatedly leaving the post was witnessed by members of the public, resulting in damage to trust in the police organization," the court said. "The demotion cannot be seen as so markedly lacking in validity by generally accepted social standards as to constitute a deviation from or abuse of disciplinary discretion."