In 1985 two intelligence agencies of the South Korean Government announced that they had successfully disrupted a North Korean spy ring operating in the United States. Their press release, which was widely publicized in the Korean press, named Chang-Sin Lee as a North Korean agent associated with a spy ring at Western Illinois University, where Lee had been a student. The story was picked up and reported in the United States by six Korean-American newspapers and a public television station. When Lee sued for libel, the defendants relied upon the official report privilege, which gives absolute protection to the accurate republication of official government reports. The district court, holding that the privilege applied and that Lee had not overcome it by showing malice, dismissed the case. Plaintiff appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which in a two to one decision reversed (per Ervin, J.) and held: that the official report privilege does not apply to the republication of official reports of foreign governments. Judge Kaufman, sitting by designation, dissented from the majority’s reversal of the district court’s grant of summary judgment.
A Contribution to the Aetiology of Plague
