I guess he really meant it!

The appeals court in Seoul, South Korea, has reversed the sentence of a lower court and acquitted a man of assisting in the suicide of another.

A South Korean man won his appeal against a one-year jail term for assisting in a suicide by throwing a lighter to his gasoline-soaked rival in love.

The Seoul appeal court reversed a lower court ruling, saying that the 30-year-old man had not believed the ex-lover of his girlfriend would actually set light to himself, Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday.

Last September, the former boyfriend had stopped the couple in their car after dousing himself in petrol, threatening to kill himself is she did not get out.

The defendant then threw him a lighter, saying: "Go ahead and kill yourself," the news agency said.

The man died of his burns.

The appeal court ruled that the fact the ex-lover had given his own cigarettes and lighter to a friend so they would not get damaged by the petrol and had not left a will showed he had not planned to commit suicide.

Personally, I think throwing him a lighter was an entirely logical thing to do. If I were in the company of a woman I cared about, and some maniac doused in gasoline confronted her like that, I'd be thinking of the danger to her if she complied. That being the case, I'd probably drive over him first, then offer him the lighter!

Peter