Jung Joon-young KakaoTalk chatrooms

Jung Joon-young, a 30-year-old South Korean singer-songwriter and television celebrity, lived in Indonesia until the age of five, then China, France, and Japan before moving to South Korea at age 19.[2][3][4] Before the scandal, he was conducting a U.S. tour in October 2018 with his rock band Drug Restaurant, which he had formed in 2015,[5] and preparing for the opening of his Korean-style fusion restaurant in Paris with a two-week trial period in November 2018.[6][7]

Jung had been involved in a previous sex-video scandal in August 2016, when an ex-girlfriend filed charges that he had taped them having sex without her consent, but later dropped the charges. The new scandal reopened the case, after revealing chat messages about the incident.[8][9] During the 2016 scandal, he dropped out of the TV show, 2 Days & 1 Night, but returned after three months.[10][11] In May 2017, a JoongAng Ilbo analysis of 44 celebrities involved in crimes and scandals between 2006 – 2016, and the length of time their return to the industry took, listed Jung's case and his quick return as an example of a sex scandal that showed the public was becoming more tolerant in what they considered to be the "private lives of celebrities."[12]

Jung began his career as a contestant on the audition show Superstar K 4 in 2012, where he placed third, and where he met and became friends with the show's winner and another of the chatroom participants, 25-year-old singer-songwriter soloist Roy Kim, whose real name is Kim Sang-woo,[13][14][15] and 29-year-old singer-songwriter soloist Eddy Kim, whose real name is Kim Jung-hwan.[16][17] Jung was also friends with Seungri, age 28 and Choi Jong-hoon, age 29.[18][19][20] Choi was the guitarist and leader of the rock band F.T. Island since their debut in 2007, until he resigned due to the scandal.[21][22]

On February 26, 2019, the first KakaoTalk messages were released by an anonymous source in connection with the ongoing investigation of the Burning Sun scandal[23]

The source of the earlier KakaoTalk messages, which were first shared by media reports in the Burning Sun scandal, was revealed to be lawyer Bang Jung-hyun on March 11, when he was interviewed on SBS Eight O'Clock News.[24] He had obtained the messages from a whistleblower, possibly a technician at a phone repair shop, where Jung Joon-young had dropped his phone off for repairs.[25][8] The whistleblower had sent an email to Bang of thousands of chats taken from Jung's phone that had taken place over eight months between 2015 and 2016.[26] When the Burning Sun scandal started, the phone messages were forwarded to the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission and to SBS funE; and the secretly filmed sex tapes and other chat messages on Jung's phone became public.[25][8] During the SBS interview, the integrity of the chatroom file was discussed and said to have a tamper-proof device, technically a hash-code verification, showing that the file had not been manipulated; and could stand as circumstantial evidence to seek more evidence.[24] Bang, an economics graduate of Seoul National University[27] said of the chats, "Their conversations showed that there were not only sex crimes by celebrities, but also a cozy relationship between them and top police officers," and "It is someone higher up than [the Gangnam Police Precinct chief]."[26]

The phone belonged to Jung,[8] who was in Los Angeles filming for another television show when the news of his involvement in the chatrooms reached him. He hurriedly returned to Seoul on March 12,[28] where he was booked as a suspect on charges of illegal hidden camera filming and sharing[29] and accused of taping 10 or more women.[30] Chatroom messages first released by SBS TV were translated into English and shared by other media, including The Korea Times. Some of the conversation they translated for April 17, 2016, was as follows: Kim 1 "Anybody want porn?", Choi "Me", Kim 1 (Kim sends the video), Choi "Wait, she is fainted.", Kim 1 "So what?", Choi: "I want to see her alive (in the video).", Kim 1 "Then I couldn't have turned on the flash." Jung "You raped her. (Laughs)".[31] In another alleged chat conversation in The Washington Post, Jung said, "Let's all get together online, hit the strip bar and rape them in the car." Another member responded, "Our lives are like a movie. We have done so many things that could put us in jail. We just haven't killed anyone."[32]

Later on March 12, Jung released a statement saying, "I admit to all my crimes", and resigned from all his entertainment work a day following Seungri's resignation. Jung said, "I filmed women without their consent and shared it in a chatroom, and while I was doing so I didn't feel a great sense of guilt," and apologized to his victims.[30] Jung had previously been investigated over similar charges in August 2016 and December 2018. In the 2016 hidden camera case, his victim, an ex-girlfriend, withdrew her complaint of his filming them having sex without her consent, but a March 13 SBS report had added allegations of possible police tampering with the case.[8][9]

Seungri's and Jung's inter-locking scandals were combined in public view when both were called into the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) station on March 14, with more than 100 journalists gathered for Jung's 10 a.m. appearance.[33] He apologized before entering the station for questioning and a drug test; followed similarly by Seungri, some three hours later. Seungri exited first at around 6:15 a.m. on March 15 and told reporters that he would be requesting to delay his mandatory military service later in the month. Jung exited around an hour later and told reporters he had handed in his "golden phone", a public nickname his second mobile phone had gained in a 2016 talk show.[34]

SMPA Jongno Police Station where Jung was taken after March 21, 2019 arrest.

On the same day, two other Korean idols, Yong Jun-hyung of K-pop boy band Highlight[35] and Choi Jong-hoon of rock band F.T. Island[21], resigned from entertainment after allegations they were involved in Jung's chatrooms. Yong admitted to viewing a sex tape recorded without the woman's permission and participating in "inappropriate conversations" about it, saying, "All these behaviours were extremely unethical, and I was stupid".[35] Choi had been a member of one of the chatrooms that was of immediate interest in media reports and the investigation.[36][25] In one conversation, Choi allegedly detailed his own drunk driving incident from 2016,[37] that was allegedly kept out of media coverage due to help from a police official with the surname Yoon. Choi was questioned on March 16 under allegations of secretly filming and sharing videos.[38]

On March 15, another Korean idol, Lee Jong-hyun of rock band CNBLUE, made his admission through a statement from his agency FNC Entertainment. Lee said that he had viewed Jung's sex videos in a chat group and had made disparaging remarks about women, talking about them as sexual objects. The admission followed a prior denial on his part and an SBS report of an alleged KakaoTalk conversation he had with Jung, during which Lee asks for "young", "pretty" and "kind" women he can play with and have sex with, and to which Jung responded, "Who do you want?"[39]

Other celebrities affected by the scandal were actor Cha Tae-hyun and comedian Kim Jun-ho, Jung's fellow cast members on 2 Days & 1 Night, who resigned from the entertainment industry on March 16 after the chatroom conversations revealed allegations of their gambling on golf in large amounts.[40][41]

Jung was arrested on March 21, for charges under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes.[42][43] He was charged with crimes against at least ten victims for illegally filming and distributing sex tapes. Jung admitted to the charges and apologized at the hearing for his arrest at the Seoul Central District Court and was later taken to the SMPA Jongno Police Station.[44] On March 29, he was transferred from the police station again to the prosecution for referral of an indictment,[43] and he was indicted on April 17.[45]

At the beginning of April, two more Korean idols were added to the list of KakaoTalk chatroom participants. On April 2, 2019, SMPA issued a summons for soloist Roy Kim, who they said appeared in the illegal chatroom with Jung, Seungri and Choi,[13] and booked him the following day for distributing an obscene photo in the chatroom, which he denied taking himself,[46] and which investigators agreed was likely the case.[16] His agency coordinated his return from his U.S. schooling,[13][47] and he was questioned by SMPA on April 10.[48] On April 5, soloist Eddy Kim was booked for circulating one or more illegally taken photographs.[16]

On April 3, the agency for Kangin of boy band Super Junior, Label SJ, released a statement admitting that Kangin had been a member of Jung's chatroom while working together on a TV show three years prior and denied any illegal activity on his part.[15] On April 4, police said that Kangin, Jeong Jin-woon of boy band 2AM, and model Lee Cheol-woo were members of the chatrooms, but they had no plans to question them yet.[49] The three celebrities had been cast members with Jung on the 2016 TV show Hitmaker.[50]

An early April police tally said that seven chatroom members had been booked for disseminating spycam content; and there were a total of 23 different groups or one-on-one chatrooms, with 16 participants. Included in the bookings and instances of occurrences were: Jung, 13; Choi, 3; and Seungri, 1.[13] Two arrests included Jung's and a former Burning Sun employee's, surnamed Kim,[49] including a probe of five others.[51]

On April 19, the first victim complaint against chat group members since the beginning of the scandal was filed on Jung, Choi and three others, former employees of the Burning Sun and YG Entertainment, and a businessman. The victim alleged she was raped in a hotel room in 2016 while she was passed out, and the incident was filmed by the group.[52][53] Her complaint followed an April 11 interview of lawyer Bang on JTBC's Lee Gyu-yeon's Spotlight, where he said there were about ten photos and videos from the chatrooms that showed forced sexual assaults, sometimes by multiple members of the chat group. He had met with some of the women from the videos, who were unaware of what had happened to them, perhaps due to having been drugged.[54][55] On April 23, SMPA began an investigation into the complainant's allegations, which reportedly occurred at a hotel in Daegu in March 2016, after a fan signing event for Jung; and a second similar rape case at a resort in Hongcheon in January 2016, where another alleged victim traveled with chat group members, including Jung and Choi. SMPA said they were aware of group rape after examining the videos, but had not been able to identify the victims until they came forward. The cases were assigned to the SMPA's Women and Juvenile Affairs Division, who have expertise in crimes against women, including sexual assault.[56]

Choi Jong-hoon was arrested on May 9 for allegations of group sexual assault with four members of Jung's chat group in March 2016; after appearing at a hearing with two others and denying the charges against him.[57] Another male, surname Kwon, was also arrested; with both Choi and Kwon charged under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes.[58] Jung, who was still under police custody, pled guilty to 11 cases of the illicit filming and sharing at a May 10 pretrial hearing, where he offered to settle with the victims. He was being investigated separately in the gang rape case, where he, like Choi, denied allegations.[59] On May 17, SMPA referred the gang rape case of the five chat group members to prosecutors, recommending indictments on charges of special rape.[60] On June 5, after indictments, the Seoul Central District Court merged the trials for the five previously accused, Jung, Choi, Kwon, a Burning Sun MD named Kim, and an entertainment director named Heo, to include two charges of gang rapes of two victims in 2016, in Hongcheon in January, and Daegu in March.[61][62][63] The five appeared at a June 27 hearing and denied the rape charges.[64][65] At the first trial hearing on July 16, which included the illegal filming and sharing and rape charges, Jung and Kwon admitted to having sex but denied rape, and Choi denied having sex. Jung's lawyer submitted a statement contesting the legality of evidence obtained from the KakaoTalk messages in violation of the Personal Information Protection Act. The court specified five victims, two reference witnesses, a time period for the alleged illegal photography from November 2015 to June 2016, the dates of the alleged rapes on January 9 and March 20 2016, and the need for confidentiality of the victims.[66][67][68][69] The next trial dates, on August 19, August 26, September 2, September 16, September 23, October 7 and October 21 were closed to the public.[70][71][72][73] At the ninth trial date on November 13, prosecutors recommended prison sentences on the rape charges for all five men. The defendants and number of years respectively were: Jung, 7; Choi, 5; Kwon, 10; Kim, 10; and Heo, 5. Jung's charges included the illicit filming and sharing. Prosecutors also asked that all five be restricted from working with children and minors for 10 years, be required to disclose personal information, and undergo sexual violence treatment programs.[74][75][76] Another trial date was held on November 27.[76][77]

On November 29, the court sentenced Jung to six years in prison and Choi to five, and both were sentenced to complete 80 hours of sexual assault treatment and a five-year restriction on working with children and minors.[78][79][80] The judge said "the defendants treated the women as simple instruments of sexual pleasure", "committing crimes of gang rape and sexual assault" and "sharing their acts in a chatroom with acquaintances", and said the "damage to the victims could not be recovered".[81] Both Jung and Choi cried after the sentences were announced.[78] The other three defendants were also sentenced, with Kim receiving a five-year prison sentence, Kwon a four-year prison sentence, and Heo received a suspended sentence and two years probation and 160 hours of community service.[78][81] By December 6, Jung, Choi and Kim had submitted appeals to the court for their convictions.[82][83]

On January 30, 2020, Jung and Choi were indicted by prosecutors on more charges, along with nine others in the Burning Sun case, Jung for allegations of soliciting prostitution and Choi for bribing a police officer during his drunk driving incident in February 2016.[84] On February 4, the first trial hearing for an appeal of the November 29 rape convictions by all five defendants was held.[85] At the March 18 trial for Choi for additional charges, he admitted to illegal filming and sharing in the KakaoTalk chatrooms, but denied the 2016 police bribery charge. Prosecutors proposed an additonal one year and a half sentencing on top of his prior rape conviction sentence, if convicted.[86]

Agencies for Roy Kim and Eddy Kim released statements on February 25 and March 6, respectively, that their indictments had been suspended from prosecution due to each singer having uploaded only one image that was captured online, and had belonged to a "hobby chatroom" with Jung Joon-young, not the more questionable one.[87][88]

On April 3, Jung and Kim were fined one million won and two million won, respectively, in a summary judgment for the prostitution charges, along with judgments for two others in the Burning Sun case.[89]

On May 12, an appellate court reduced the prison sentences for three of the defendants: Jung's to five years from six, Choi's to two-and-a-half years from five, and Kim's to four years from five.[90][91] Sentences for the other two defendants, Kwon's four years in prison and Heo's two years probation, remained the same as the first trial.[91] Jung had submitted documents attesting to his regret, and Choi and Kim had settled with one of the victims, accounting for the sentence reductions.[91][92] Jung and Choi were additionally denied probation, mandated to attend treatment programs and restricted from working with children and teens.[93] Jung and Choi submitted appeals to the Supreme Court of South Korea on May 13 and May 18, respectively.[94][95]