(Seoul) Former K-pop star Jung Joon-young was released Tuesday after five years in prison for gang rape and illegal video recording, in one of South Korea’s biggest spycam scandals .
The ex-singer was convicted of two rapes in 2016, as well as filming himself having sex with women without their knowledge and sharing the recordings without their consent.
Wearing a black hat and mask, the 35-year-old walked out of Mokpo Prison, some 350 kilometers from Seoul, without addressing journalists waiting for him early Tuesday, according to the News1 news agency.
Spy cameras, known as “molka” in Korean, are typically used by men to secretly film women in schools, bathrooms and other places. The term can also be used to describe the act of clandestinely filming a consensual sexual relationship.
Jung Joon-young’s case is one of the major sex scandals involving male celebrities in South Korea, cases that emerged at the height of the #metoo movement in the country. In 2018, thousands of women protested in Seoul, chanting: “My life is not your porn.”
Another K-pop star, Seungri, a former member of popular boyband BIGBANG, was found to have received Jung Joon-young’s recordings. Seungri was convicted in another case involving sex and drugs at his nightclub “Burning Sun.”
Jung Joon-young rose to fame in 2012 after a stint on a television show. He then enjoyed success with several solo titles before the scandal broke out in early 2019.
At that time, the rape accusations had not yet been made, but the ex-star admitted to “committing crimes that cannot be forgiven.”
That same year, Goo Hara, a former member of the girlsband Kara, committed suicide after being blackmailed into “revenge porn” by an ex-boyfriend.