Reminder that Seungri is a sex offender. Convicted and registered.
As some of you may be aware, Seungri was recently released from prison after serving a criminally short sentence of just 18 months for the commission of 9 crimes ranging from economic (financial) crimes, crimes of violence, and sex crimes.
That's right. Sex crimes.
In his sentencing hearing in August 2021, at the conclusion of the first trial in the Lower Military Court, just before he was whisked away to prison, the judge explained to Seungri that he would be subject to "registration of personal information related to sex crimes." See below:
This was not widely reported, or even given much attention, with most of the media's focus being on the 3-year prison term and accompanying fine related to gambling. (Surprisingly, it did make it into Soompi's coverage, but I've reached my image limit on this post so here's a link to the report instead.)
In the second trial with the High Court (first appeal), in which Seungri pleaded guilty to all charges (except for habitual gambling which he appealed again, hoping to lower it to "occasional" gambling, a lesser charge... he was unsuccessful with that, by the way), the court granted him leniency, cutting his prison term in half and forgiving the nearly $1 million fine. A generous reduction in punishment simply for saying, "I'm guilty, I'm sorry, go easy on me."
At the time, I couldn't find any information on whether or not the registration requirement for sex crimes remained in place. Even after the Supreme Court finalized everything in May of last year, there seemed to be no mention of it.
Now, however, days after his release from prison and return to society, we finally have confirmation:
More on the exemption for disclosure:
In short, Seungri is a registered sex offender required by law to submit (and keep current) his personal information to the authorities. He must also return each year to the local police station having jurisdiction over his home address and have updated mugshots photos taken -- once a year, every year, for the next 15 years. To put that into perspective, they'll be keeping tabs on him until he's in his late 40s.
So, yes, his information is registered. However, at the judge's discretion he was exempted from disclosure. This means his personal information (such as home address) will not be available, i.e., publicly searchable, on South Korea's online sex offender registry.
What was his violation of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes? Well, we knew he had been charged with distributing some form of illegally filmed sexual material, also known as hidden camera footage or molka. It was described as being a photo of women, in bed, naked -- and, importantly, photographed from behind, which raises the question of consent.
Seungri admitted in 2019 to sharing something in a group chatroom, as there was chat evidence of this that could not be disputed. However, he challenged the notion that he'd taken the photo himself, claiming he'd received it from someone else. He later took it a step further and disputed the nature of the photo altogether by trying to pass it off as a "business advertisement" sent to him in a "spam text message" from an employee of an adult entertainment business. For publicity purposes.
The court rejected his excuse explanation for the photo and deemed him guilty of distribution (of illegally filmed footage). But as for who took the photo, whether it was Seungri or someone else, the court's decision didn't seem especially clear to me. Though I suspected he'd been convicted of illegal filming as well, I couldn't be sure... until now, thanks to JTBC reporting details from the ruling.
The KKT chat log, made public in 2019, did not support Seungri's claim. The testimony of other members of the chat, when questioned in court, did not support it either.
So much for his fans' stubborn insistence that he "wasn't in the molka chats." Thanks to the chat evidence, court docs from Jung Joonyoung's ruling, and Seungri's own admission in an interview with Chosun Ilbo, we've known for years that Seungri not only knew about his friends' molka habits but received such things from them directly and even reacted to them with amusement (laughter). Now, with the detailed results of Seungri's court proceedings before us, we can be certain that he took part in the practice too.
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