Among them were comments that the people behind the avatars “could be ugly in real life” and gave off a “typical Korean man vibe”, Korea Times reported.

I wish they’d reprint some of the actually “harmful” comments, because that kind of thing is just shitty online discourse. These examples are also pretty obviously targeted at the anons behind the group, not the avatars, but, again, it’s no different from saying “I bet the person behind I Cast Fist is a fat and ugly man” - that’s not defamation

But the court rejected the argument, saying that if an avatar was widely recognised to represent someone real, then attacks on the avatar also extended to the real person.

No, it does not. That’s a terrible precedent to make. A character is not the person behind it, a character can live on without the original person behind it and can be interpreted by a different person.