# Is He Guilty? — The Seungri Question

When talking about the Burning Sun scandal, specifically in regards to Seungri, most people want a clear cut answer to one question:

Is he guilty?

For most people, his guilty verdict is enough of an answer for determining his moral value. However, many people take that guilty verdict and assign whatever crimes they’ve already assumed he has. He served prison time, therefore he must be guilty of trafficking, rape, police bribery, etc., but the truth isn’t so simple. To begin dissecting what Seungri is legitimately, factually guilty of, we must first look at what his actual charges were.

The following charges can be found on the Supreme Court’s verdict document:

1. Violation of the Act on the Punishment of Acts of Arranging Prostitution, etc. (Arranging Prostitution, etc.)

2. Violation of the Act on the Punishment of Acts of Arranging Prostitution, etc. (Prostitution)

3. Habitual Gambling

4. Violation of the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act

5. Violation of the Special Act on the Punishment of Sexual Violence Crimes (Filming Using Cameras, etc.)

6. Violation of the Food Sanitation Act

7. Embezzlement in the Course of Business

8. Violation of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes (Embezzlement)

9. Incitement to Special Assault

With these charges firmly established, it is also necessary to establish what these charges actually mean—as the legal titles are not necessarily intuitive.

• Violation of the Act on the Punishment of Acts of Arranging Prostitution, etc. (Arranging Prostitution, etc.)

This charge, otherwise referred to as Prostitution Mediation, was given to Seungri on the suspicion that he had hired prostitutes on behalf of other people. What this means is that the sex workers in question had provided sexual services for a third party other than Seungri, but Seungri had allegedly participated in arranging or paying for them. This means, in plainest terms, that he was accused of facilitating the purchase of sexual services for someone else.

This does NOT mean that Seungri was convicted of trafficking. While terms such as ‘pimp’ are sometimes used colloquially to describe people who facilitate prostitution, the Korean charge itself does not require that Seungri employed, controlled, forced, or coerced the sex workers involved. It concerned the arrangement or facilitation of prostitution.

This also does not equate to trafficking, as trafficking involves exploitation through force, coercion, deception, abuse of vulnerability, or similar means. The prostitutes relevant to this charge did not testify to having been trafficked by Seungri, and Seungri was not charged with trafficking them. It is harmful and disrespectful to label a person as a victim against their wishes or consent and the women’s autonomy to choose that label for themselves, or not to, should be respected.

• Violation of the Act on the Punishment of Acts of Arranging Prostitution, etc. (Prostitution)

This charge means Seungri was suspected to have purchased sex work services for himself—meaning he paid a sex worker who had sex with him in return.

• Habitual Gambling

This charge refers to instances in which Seungri was believed to have habitually gambled while visiting Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States.

South Korea allows gambling that amounts only to a “mere pastime”, wherein one can partake casually, at low stakes, amongst friends, and/or infrequently. Whether gambling qualifies as a mere pastime is determined based on the overall circumstances rather than any one fixed rule, including factors such as the amount wagered, frequency, context, and the participants’ financial circumstances.

Habitual gambling is a separate and more serious offense. In Seungri’s case, prosecution argued that Seungri had gambled habitually and that the amount, repetition, and circumstances meant it could not be considered a “mere pastime”.

• Violation of the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act

This charge refers to an instance in which Seungri received casino credit in Las Vegas in US dollars. Because this created a foreign exchange transaction subject to Korean reporting requirements, Seungri was required to file a foreign-exchange declaration. He failed to do this, making it a violation of the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act.

• Violation of the Special Act on the Punishment of Sexual Violence Crimes (Filming Using Cameras, etc.)

This charge tends to cause some of the most confusion, as people assume this is in regards to Jung Joonyoung’s molka chatroom. The image in question was sent in a business Kakaotalk chatroom containing Jung Joonyoung, Choi Jonghoon, and Kim Incheol, however, this was NOT “the” molka chatroom.

This singular photo was the one and only instance presented in Seungri’s case of him sending this type of illegal image. The image featured three women, whose backs were bare, laying down on a bed with their faces covered. It was reported during the trial that Seungri did not take the photo himself, and his charge concerned distributing the image rather than filming it himself.

Unfortunately, the translated title of the charge can make this confusing. Korean law does distinguish between filming and distributing, but both forms of conduct fall under the same broader statutory provisions concerning illegal sexual images. Because of this, a charge translated as “Filming Using Cameras, etc.” can appear on paper even when the defendant’s conduct involved distribution rather than personally taking the photograph.

• Violation of the Food Sanitation Act

This charge is for filing his club, Monkey Museum, as a ‘General Restaurant’ instead of as an ‘Entertainment Bar’, as was legally necessary based on the layout of his club. Seungri explained that he was not personally overseeing the construction and management of the club and that, when this issue was pointed out to him, it was his understanding that it was corrected.

• Embezzlement in the Course of Business

This embezzlement was of Yuri Holdings, which involved a smaller amount and thus fell under the ordinary occupational embezzlement provisions rather than the aggravated economic-crimes statute.

• Violation of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes (Embezzlement)

This embezzlement was of Burning Sun and is an aggravated version of the previous charge, denoting the larger quantity of funds allegedly appropriated.

• Incitement to Special Assault.

This refers to an instance in which a drunk man entered Seungri’s private room at a club and began verbally harassing Seungri and his female friend. Prosecution argued that Seungri then caused gang-affiliated individuals to become involved in intimidating the man, however, Seungri argued that the person he called was Yoo Inseok and denied instructing anyone to commit violence or intimidation.

///

With an understanding of what exactly Seungri’s charges are, the next thing to dissect is the actual progression of the trials, what determinations were found, and why audiences who followed the news coverage were surprised by Seungri’s guilty verdict.

One thing to understand right off the bat is that South Korea’s prosecutorial system relies heavily on witness testimonies and confessions. When considering two things, one question starts to emerge;

Seungri’s first two arrest warrants were rejected, with the courts citing disputes over parts of the allegations, the evidence already collected, Seungri’s degree of involvement, and the lack of necessity for detention.

Throughout the trials, multiple witnesses testified that the police had either misled them into making inaccurate statements, misunderstood what they had said, or recorded statements that they later said did not accurately reflect their intended testimony.

The question: Did prosecution rely on damning witness testimonies that were less reliable than they appeared on paper in order to strengthen a case that had previously failed to justify Seungri’s detention?

If this is the case, then how did prosecution ultimately secure a conviction after the witnesses corrected themselves on the stand? If there was substantial physical evidence, why was none of it reported on in the news coverage that publicized Seungri’s trials?

One theory can be drawn as a result of the statement Judge Hwang Minje made wherein he placed the blame of “unreliable witnesses” on Seungri (functionally, suggesting that Seungri may have influenced the witnesses) rather than investigating the prosecution’s questionable investigative tactics. It could be assumed from this statement that the testimonies given in court were dismissed by the judge, who decided to rely, instead, on the testimonies presented by prosecution in spite of the witnesses stating under oath that they were not correct.

Many critics have accused both the judge and prosecution of having made their minds up about convicting Seungri prior to the trials, and had passed a guilty verdict in spite of the evidence instead of because of it. This criticism can be understood in the context of the uprise in protests and civil unrest in South Korea by women’s rights movements and the general public in response to the police’s conclusive statement that their investigation had found no evidence of trafficking at Burning Sun.

Many Netizens have accused the police and prosecution of pursuing a guilty sentence against Seungri as a means to “fix” the distrust in authorities caused by their “unsatisfactory” findings with Burning Sun.

The change in witness testimonies was not the only issue with Seungri’s trial, either. Besides the fact that multiple key witnesses on several charges testified in ways that contradicted or weakened prosecution’s claims regarding Seungri’s role, it was also confirmed during the trials that other individuals had personally carried out several of the acts underlying the charges.

For both prostitution charges, testimony indicated that Yoo Inseok was the one who hired or arranged the prostitutes. Yoo Inseok confessed to his own involvement and both prostitutes and people involved in arranging their services testified that their orders came from Yoo Inseok.

For the Burning Sun embezzlement charge, evidence indicated that other individuals were responsible for carrying out the financial transactions at issue and that Seungri’s alleged culpability rested on whether he knowingly participated in or benefited from those transactions.

Despite these facts, those charges were not dropped. He was held criminally responsible despite evidence showing that he was not necessarily the person who personally carried out the underlying acts.

Furthermore, the “victim” of the Inciting Violence charge testified that he did not feel threatened by Seungri and did not want Seungri to be punished. Despite questions regarding the evidence establishing Seungri’s direct role in the threat, the charge was reduced from its original proposed form instead of being dropped entirely.

Seungri’s culpability is not simply a question of whether or not Seungri received a guilty sentence, it is also a question of whether that sentence was fair, just, and unbiased.