A court in the Republic of Korea said in a statement on Thursday that it had acquitted a ROK citizen of sympathizing with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea for following its Twitter account. It said that simply reading Pyongyang's social media posts did not violate the security laws of the country.

Seoul prosecutors earlier charged the 73-year-old journalist, identified only by his surname Lee, with "distributing" materials that praised Pyongyang by following its official Twitter account, @uriminzok.

Lee was, however, found guilty of supporting the DPRK in his own blog postings and was sentenced to a one-year jail term, suspended for two years.