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| Seungri, a former member of K-pop group Big Bang, arrives at a police office in Seoul for investigation in March, 2019. Korea Times file |
By Kim Se-jeong
As Seungri, a former member of K-pop group Big Bang, was released from prison last Thursday, a local cable news channel released court documents revealing his involvement in sex trafficking.
According to JTBC, a cable news channel, the singer, whose real name is Lee Seung-hyun, organized commercial sex services on 29 occasions between December 2015 and January 2016 to the value of 43 million won.
Seungri was indicted in 2020 over his involvement in the Burning Sun scandal and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Burning Sun was a nightclub in Seoul in which he was affiliated with.
On one of the 29 occasions, he drove sex workers to Incheon International Airport where he met two prospect investors from Japan and provided them with sex services in a car en route to a hotel in Seoul where the service continued in their rooms.
Other than sex trafficking, the singer was convicted of other charges including misappropriating funds from his nightclub and illicit gambling of around $1.7 million.
The court documents also said Seungri in 2016 coerced three women ― most likely his fans ― to pose nude for pictures in his hotel room in China when his group was on tour there. He later shared the pictures in a Kakao group chat.
It stated that the felon has continued denying the charges but that there was enough evidence to convict him.
The former singer started his music career with Big Bang in 2006 and left the group in 2019 in the wake of the nightclub scandal.
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