You may be here trying to find out the facts about the sex scandal that you’ve heard so much about or you may have stumbled across this blog and are wondering what it is all about. The recent sex scandal has come as a massive shock to the K-Pop industry and to the fans in South Korea and the global fans also, with confirmed celebrities being involved and more rumours about celebrities coming around every day.
Before we talk about the scandal itself, we should talk about the laws in South Korea against prostitution. South Korean has always had a law that makes prostitution illegal in any shape or form, and you could face two years imprisonment if you are caught using the services of a prostitute or you are “selling yourself” as a prostitute.
So, when was the sex scandal first discovered? Who is involved? What are the accused, accused of? What are the rumours and the truths?
The Burning Sun Incident…
The first report that started the investigation into Seungri was on February 28th, 2019 when Mr.Kim accused the club staff at Burning Sun of assaulting him and also accused the police of assaulting him and argued that their should be a full investigation into whether the police had links to the club or had been bribed by the club. The Burning Sun club is owned by BIGBANG’s Seungri (real name Lee Seung-Hyun). When the accusation got attention from news outlets in South Korea Seungri was put into a position where he made a statement saying that he was not in the club on the day of the incident and only learned about the incident days after it occurred and that his job wasn’t to manage the clubs business. The case then went to investigation and the Korean public became annoyed at Seungri as he had always stated that he was very “hands-on” with the business but the minute there was a problem with the business he implied it had nothing to do with him.
On February 26th, 2019 the police started internal investigations on Seungri about whether or not he provided sexual bribery to foreign investors in another club in Gangnam called “Club Arena”, the incident in question is supposed to of happened in 2015 – before the club Burning Sun was a club.
The next phase of this sex scandal was when a source released a Kakao Talk group chat that included Seungri. Seungri said in this group chat “Listen to whatever Mr.B wants, do well, dont mess up” when asked by another member of the group chat, “What about the girls?” he coldly replied “get girls that will give easily.” It is not confirmed what these girls were to “give” however the general public have implied that it was sex that the girls were giving to Mr.B – which is someone who we do not yet know the identity of. Seungri and YG (Seungri’s entertainment company in South Korea) released statements stating that the text messages were fabricated. On March 10, 2019 the Korean police confirmed that the text messages were, in fact, not fabricated and Seungri became a suspect in their investigation. There was then another group chat released by a source that suggested that Seungri was involved in hidden camera porn and Seungri suddenly announced his retirement from entertainment through his Instagram account @seungriseyo.
Within a day YG entertainments income went down by 14% meaning they lost $100,000,000 (approx. £75,000,000) in just one day. They also lost one of their biggest investors Louis Vuitton who pulled out their $16,000,000 (approx. £12,000,000) investment in the entertainment company.
Seungri had owned a ramen (a traditional Korean dish) franchise called “Aori Ramen” which had many chains which all had their own managers, and most of these restaurants have lost the majority of their customers because of their ties to Seungri.
Seungri is still currently set to enlist on March 25th, 2019 however, it is unlikely that this investigation will finish before then. The police and military have said that he will be investigated but they are unsure of whether he’ll be serving his military enlistment or not during the investigation.
Seungri’s case is not helped by the fact that the club Burning Sun is also being investigated financially for tax invasion.
The head of the South Korean police is also being investigated by the police but, the now former head of police has said “I have never even met Seungri.” It is suspected that there is a large case of police corruption involved in the case.
The Group Chats…
The Kakao Talk group chats that involved Seungri were announced to have been discovered not from Seungri’s phone but from well-known singer, song-writer Jung JoonYoung’s phone. JoonYoung has been caught sharing privately and secretly filmed sex videos with friends in Kakao Talk group chats.
In a group chat from 2015 JoonYoung is seen talking to a friend, these are the English translations of the messages.
JoonYoung: I slept with 00. (00 has been used for the privacy of the woman involved)
JoonYoung’s friend, Mr Kim: Do you have videos?
JoonYoung then proceeded to send a 3 second video that he filmed secretly of him having sex with a woman.
In another chat JoonYoung is seen a group chat with Mr Kim and Mr Choi, a fellow singer.
Mr Kim: Who wants to see porn?
Mr Choi: Me
Mr Kim then sends a secretly filmed video of him, having sex
Mr Choi: What is this? She fainted.
Mr Kim: So what if she fainted?
Mr Choi: Send me a video of a live one
Mr Kim: I shot her with the flash on because she passed out.
JoonYoung: You raped her, lol
In another chat JoonYoung can be seen talking to a Mr Ha, Mr Park and Mr Choi, again.
JoonYoung: let’s meet online and go to a strip club and rape in the car
Mr Ha: lol
Mr Park: You do that in real life too
Mr Choi: Oh yeah we do
Mr Park: We’re living in a movie, think about if just for 5 minutes. We’ve done so many things to be locked up for. We’ve done everything except for killing.
There has been 10 confirmed victims of spy camera porn that were shared by JoonYoung and his friends in this group chat. JoonYoung also has many other group chats with which he shares these videos and if that wasn’t enough, he also sends them privately.
The Ex…
A victim of JoonYoung’s found out about videos he’d taken of her without her consent however she said she couldn’t go to the police in fear that JoonYoung may leak the videos or they would get into the wrong hands, as if they weren’t already. She messaged him saying, “If I were like other women I would have reported you but please tell your friend in a good way…” implying that she wants the friend to keep the videos secret.
Instead of keeping this private JoonYoung went to his group chat and informed them of what happened.
JoonYoung: I got caught sending you videos
Singer, Mr Yong: You’ve been caught by the girl?
JoonYoung: Yeah lol lol lol. If i didn’t get caught with the video I could of fucked her while pretending to date her.
Mr Kim: lol
Other Accused stars…
Due to the last names being revealed when the screenshots of the group chats were released, many singers are being accused. An example is Highlight’s (a K-Pop group managed by Around US entertainment) Yong Joon Hyung who was accused of being in the group chat but denied these allegations and stated “I am shocked by the malicious reports” on March 12th, 2019. However, on March 14th 2019, he left the group Highlight and released a statement, “I have watched spy cams filmed by JoonYoung.”
Zico (real name Woo Ji-Ho) also denied claims that he had watched videos on JoonYoung’s phone and that the pair haven’t spoken in a very long time anyway.
The Outcome…
JoonYoung’s company, Make Us Entertainment, confirmed on March 13th that they had terminated JoonYoung’s contract with them.
Seungri and JoonYoung are both willingly helping with the police investigation. JoonYoung has admitted to filming women without them knowing and then sharing them in the group chat and that he did so without a sense of guilt and that he will stop all activities.
JoonYoung’s girlfriend in 2016 accused him of filming her during sex without her permission and sexually assaulting her however he denied it and as she had no evidence he got away without a conviction. However, after the recent revelation of the sex scandal this case is being looked into again.
There are still a lot of fans – mostly international fans – who are supporting their idols and saying “innocent until proven guilty” and they are receiving a large amount of hate for it because they are turning a blind-eye to it.
That’s all for this blog. It is very long which I wanted to avoid but the Korean sex scandal has had so much happen that their is a lot of information to tell you. I hope you found this useful!
Thank you,
Georgia 🙂
Georgia's Blog 