Behind The Burning Sun: Research Archive

If Seungri’s participation was, at most, as a bystander, why did so many people raise him to the role of mastermind? And why are so many people determined to hold him accountable for crimes he didn’t commit? In the modern era, Seungri is freely regarded as a human trafficker, a rapist, and a pedophile, often referred to, especially in Western atmospheres, as “The Korean Epstein” or “K-Diddy” (Korean Diddy) despite his charges being, in no way, comparable to those accusations.

The people who perpetuate these myths seem to have no regard for the real person they’re speaking about, with no care as to how these baseless accusations affect his mental health and day-to-day life. These people regard themselves as good, moral people who are simply holding a bad, immoral man accountable for his actions. However, not only are their actions misguided, but they’re often overly punitive. Even those who acknowledge that his charges are limited to prostitution and financial infractions can be seen wishing death on him and calling him a rapist despite knowing that accusation isn’t factual.

This cognitive dissonance is a widely debated topic of moral philosophy, being the point of exploration in many books such as Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities by Albert Bandura. In Moral Disengagement, Bandura argues that people use psychological mechanisms that temporarily disconnect their actions from their moral self-image. This process is what he calls moral disengagement. Bandura presents eight mechanisms of moral disengagement;

1. Moral Justification (Harmful behavior is reframed as serving a noble purpose.)
2. Euphemism Labeling (The rephrasing and sanitization of morally reprehensible acts to sound less egregious.)
3. Advantageous Comparison (Comparing personal acts with worse outcomes they arguably could have engaged in but didn’t.)
4. Displacement of Responsibility (Responsibility is shifted to authority figure.)
5. Diffusion of Responsibility (Responsibility is spread across a group.)
6. Disregarding or Distorting Consequences (People minimize or ignore the harm they cause.)
7. Dehumanization (Targets are stripped of their humanity.)
8. Attribution of Blame (Victim-blaming. The target is blamed for what is being done to them.)

These mechanisms are rarely employed alone. Instead, people utilize multiple mechanisms at once to avoid feelings of guilt for the harm they’re perpetrating. Bandura’s framework provides one possible lens through which to interpret the rhetoric often directed at Seungri online. In relation to Seungri, the main mechanisms often employed are Moral Justification (“We’re bringing awareness to his actions for the sake of the victims.”), Dehumanization (calling Seungri a monster, “Seungrat”, or simply referring to him as “the trafficker”.), and Attribution of Blame (“These are the consequences of his crimes.”).

While Bandura’s philosophy explains the individual actions from an aftermath perspective, The Scapegoat by René Girard gives us some insight into how we got to this point to begin with. The book argues that societies often resolve periods of social tension, conflict, and uncertainty by unconsciously selecting a person or group to blame for their problems. Once the community unites against this target, social order is temporarily restored.

In regards to Burning Sun, the major social crisis was the topic of sexual violence prevelant in the Patriarchal Korean society. The affected Korean women were at the end of their rope with the constant violence, deflection, and victim-blaming directed at victims and, by the time Burning Sun was in full swing, they were desperate for a solution. The police, recognizing this and also highly aware of the falling faith in their authority, were also desperate to secure a conviction that would show the public they do respond appropriately to topics of sexual violence. Unfortunately, their hands were tied via the legal system and available evidence.

When the police released their conclusive report about Burning Sun [July 9], stating that no evidence of trafficking had been uncovered, the public bombarded them with criticisms. As the face of the scandal, Seungri was placed at the top of their priority list for securing a conviction. Despite the fact that Jung Joonyoung and Choi Jonghoon were more representative of the public’s targeted concerns, the media had set them up as less interesting news by reporting on their crimes and subsequent trials significantly less. Seungri was the main focus and, in the minds of the public, he represented everything wrong with Korean society.

Furthermore, Girard argues in his book that, when faced with uncertainty and chaos, people tend to prefer clear villains over complicated reality. The media had portrayed Seungri as a clear villain and the complicated reality was that the media had lied, there was no trafficking, and the only confirmed sexual crimes directly prosecuted as part of the core criminal cases were those connected to the Jung Joonyoung group chat. What’s important to note in Girard ‘s study of scapegoatism is that it is rarely experienced as scapegoating by the people doing it. Participants genuinely believe that the accused is dangerous, extraordinary measures are justified, and social problems have a clear source.

With regards to Seungri, the general public tend to react aggressively towards the idea that Seungri was, in any way, used as a scapegoat. In their minds, Seungri is genuinely guilty of drugging and raping unsuspecting women and any punitive action taken against him is not just justified but necessary in ensuring the prevention of future victimization. Faced with the complicated reality that Burning Sun was not an instance of clear narrative and villain but, rather, an intensive network of systemic failings, the public will always choose the easier route—because it’s simpler and also because it gives them a clear outlet for moral outrage.

To address the fact that Burning Sun is representative of systemic failings is to address the fact that there never was a solution. The issues with Korea’s legal system and Patriarchal society are still ongoing and there’s no easy, overnight fix for these problems. Seungri, on the other hand, presented a clear problem and solution: Seungri was orchestrating sexual violence and, thus, his conviction and ostracization stops that violence.

In short, the reality of Burning Sun offers no satisfying conclusion. It presents systemic problems without systemic solutions, institutional failures without clear accountability, and cultural issues that cannot be resolved through the conviction of a single individual. The myth, by contrast, offers clarity. It provides a villain, a narrative, and the comforting illusion that justice has been achieved. Faced with a choice between a complicated truth and a simple story, many people choose the story.

This phenomenon is further explored in Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which examines how societies react to perceived threats during periods of heightened public anxiety. Cohen argues that, in moments of social concern, certain individuals or groups can become “folk devils”—symbolic villains who come to embody broader fears and frustrations. Importantly, a folk devil does not need to be innocent of all wrongdoing. Rather, their actions and significance become exaggerated until they represent far more than the facts alone can support. Once this transformation occurs, public discussion often shifts away from evidence and toward symbolism. The individual ceases to be judged solely for what they did and instead becomes a stand-in for everything society wishes to condemn.

Viewed through Cohen’s framework, Seungri’s role in the public imagination appears to extend far beyond the crimes for which he was actually convicted. By virtue of his celebrity status and constant presence in media coverage, he became the face of Burning Sun in a way that other participants never did. As public anger over sexual violence, corruption, celebrity privilege, and institutional failure intensified, these concerns increasingly converged onto a single figure. In many discussions, Seungri was no longer treated as an individual whose actions could be evaluated according to available evidence, but as a symbol of a much larger social problem. This symbolic role helps explain why allegations that were never substantiated continue to be repeated years later: as Cohen notes, folk devils derive their power not from factual accuracy, but from their usefulness as vessels for collective fear and moral outrage.

Another core concept that perseveres throughout the Burning Sun scandal is that of Confirmation Bias. In general, people are highly susceptible to accepting the first information they receive as true and complete. This is a dangerous concept to be applied to Burning Sun considering the methods in which journalism operates, especially with regards to sensational, groundbreaking stories. Journalists work to be the first to break a story, meaning little fact checking is initially necessary because they can release amendment articles after the fact. The most important thing is being quicker than your competitors. This was observably the case with Burning Sun, where many outlets were quick to publish that Seungri was the owner of Burning Sun only to later amend those claims with clarifying articles.

The issue is that the clarifying articles did not receive the same attention. People are prone to confirmation bias, whatever information they see first is correct and, afterwards, they only take in further information that agrees with it. In Seungri’s case, the first information people heard was that he owned Burning Sun, Burning Sun was trafficking women, and Seungri was convicted for sex trafficking. Each of these headlines worked in tandem to cement a certain narrative in their minds, making it seemingly impossible to correct that understanding now.

Taken together, these theories paint a picture of how the public understanding of Burning Sun evolved into something far removed from the facts of the case. Cohen explains how Seungri became a folk devil—a symbolic villain onto whom broader social anxieties could be projected. Girard explains how, during a period of social frustration and uncertainty, that symbolic villain became a scapegoat for problems far larger than any one individual could create. Bandura explains how people justify the treatment of that scapegoat while maintaining a positive view of themselves, and confirmation bias explains why contradictory evidence struggles to gain traction once a narrative has been established.

None of this is to suggest that Seungri was innocent of wrongdoing or undeserving of criticism. Rather, it suggests that the public conversation surrounding Burning Sun ceased being a discussion about evidence long ago. Instead, it became a story—one with a villain, victims, and a satisfying moral conclusion. The problem is that reality is rarely so simple, and understanding what truly happened requires a willingness to look beyond the story and confront the facts, even when those facts are less emotionally satisfying than the narrative they replace.