2 K-pop stars were jailed for raping a drunk, unconscious woman in a scandal that shows the industry's dark underbelly
by Sinéad BakerYouTube/KBS World TV/gdyong8 지디영8/
- A South Korean court found two K-pop stars guilty of gang raping a drunk, unconscious woman.
- Jung Joon-young, formerly of the group Drug Restaurant, was sentenced to six years in prison, while Choi Jong-hoon, a former member of the group FT Island, was sentenced to five years.
- Jung was also charged with filming sex with women without their knowledge and sharing the footage. He confessed in March to filming sex with 10 women without their consent and sharing the footage online.
- The scandal was uncovered as part of a wider investigation into another K-pop star and comes as numerous incidents harm K-pop's goal of having a squeaky-clean image.
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Two K-pop stars have been sentenced to prison for gang raping a drunk, unconscious woman.
Jung Joon-young, a singer-songwriter who was previously the lead singer of the group Drug Restaurant, was sentenced to six years in prison, while Choi Jong-hoon, a former member of the group FT Island, was sentenced to five years by a South Korean court.
Jung, 30, was also charged with filming sex videos with women without their knowledge and sharing the footage, Reuters reported.
Seoul Central District Court in South Korea said in a statement on Friday that the stars were convicted of committing "special quasi-raping," which occurs when multiple people collaborate to have illicit sexual intercourse with someone who is unconscious or unable to resist, according to CBS News.
Both men were also ordered to complete 80 hours of sexual-violence courses and are barred from working with children, the BBC reported.
Judge Kang Seong-soo said Jung raped women who were "drunk and unable to resist, filmed them nude and having sex, then spread it on a group chat."
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
"We can't imagine the pain the victims might have felt who found out later," he said, according to the BBC.
The court also said Choi, 30, "did not feel remorse after mass-raping drunken victims," the BBC reported.
It said both stars were in online chat groups that joked about drugging and raping women, the outlet reported.
Jung confessed in March to filming himself having sex with 10 women without their consent, as part of a scandal that has rocked the K-pop world, which tries to project a clean image.
"I admit to all my crimes. I filmed women without their consent and shared it in a social-media chat room, and while I did so I didn't feel a great sense of guilt," the 30-year-old then said in a statement.
He said then that the sex was consensual.
He posted the videos on a chat room on KakaoTalk, an instant-messaging service.
Han Myung-Gu/WireImage
Yong Jun-hyung, another K-pop star, left his band in March and acknowledged watching the videos. He then said on Instagram: "I received a video from Jung and did have inappropriate conversations."
Jung and Yong were caught only because the Korean police were already investigating another K-pop megastar over separate report of illegal activity.
The police began investigating the Big Bang star "Seungri" — real name Lee Seung-hyun — in January, after a reported sexual assault at a nightclub called Burning Sun in Seoul's Gangnam district. Seungri was the club's public-relations director.
The police then discovered the sex videos as well as him talking online about securing prostitutes, leading him to be charged by the police.