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| Singer Jung Joon-young enters the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency to be questioned over gang rape and other sexual violence allegations in this March 14 photo. / Yonhap |
Former FT Island member Choi Jong-hoon gets 5 years
By Lee Suh-yoon
K-pop singers Jung Joon-young and Choi Jong-hoon were sentenced to six years and five years in jail, respectively, Friday, after being found guilty on charges of rape and distributing videos of their crimes.
The sentences followed the nation's worst scandal of sex-related crimes by celebrities, which involved drugging and sexually assaulting women at the Burning Sun nightclub, that came to light earlier this year
"The accused, famous entertainment figures, committed sex crimes including the gang rape of a woman who was defenseless at the time. They also shared the events on KakaoTalk mobile messages, using women as tools for sexual gratification," Judge Kang Seong-su of the Seoul Central District Court said in reading the verdict.
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| Former FT Island member Choi Jong-hoon stands outside Seoul Central District Court after an arrest warrant hearing for him on charges of sexual violence in this May 9 photo. / Yonhap |
The two singers will also have to undergo 80 hours of education on sexual violence prevention.
Jung and Choi broke into tears as the verdict was announced.
In the same ruling, the judge also handed down a jail term of five years to a Burning Sun marketing agent surnamed Kim, and four years to a friend of the singers, surnamed Kwon, who is a brother of a Girls' Generation member. The two were also members of a group chat room where Jung uploaded intimate video footage of his female partners. Another member of the group chat, a former entertainment agency employee, was given a suspended sentence for involvement in sexual assault, but not rape.
The court recognized Jung and Choi as guilty of a gang rape in March 2016. The victim was heavily drunk and nearly unconscious at the time of the assault, which took place in Daegu.
Jung was also found guilty of distributing 11 different "spycam porn" videos in male-only group chats where misogynistic comments were rampant. In one leaked message, Jung suggests to the others that they should "meet (a woman) online and rape her in a car," to which one replied that the group members had already done this.
Both Jung and Choi denied the rape charges during the trial. Jung, who admitted to distributing the illicit videos, said the sex depicted in them was consensual.
"I'm sorry I made victims feel ashamed and bad," Jung said in his final testimony in court.
"This will serve as a good precedent for similar cases in the future. It has been common to see cases where such rape is not recognized because the victim was under the influence of alcohol or some other drugged state, which makes it hard for her to present evidence in a courtroom," Choi Ran, a counselor at the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, said in a phone interview. "The ruling also makes clear the treatment of women as sexual playthings in male entertainment stars' group chats is not our culture but a sex crime."
Seungri, a former BIGBANG member at the center of the Burning Sun scandal, was also a part of the group chat where Jung shared the illegal videos. Though not taken into custody like Jung or Choi, Seungri is awaiting his own trial on a host of charges including soliciting prostitution, embezzling funds from Burning Sun and distribution of sexually explicit spycam videos.
