SEOUL – A South Korean court on March 15 found Oh Young-soo, the actor who won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a contestant in the Netflix survival drama Squid Game, guilty of indecent assault.

The 79-year-old was given an eight-month suspended sentence and ordered to attend 40 hours of classes on sexual violence. The verdict and sentencing were announced on March 15 at a district court in Seongnam, a city south-east of Seoul.

Many of the hearings in the case were closed to the public. Oh had publicly denied the charge.

Prosecutors charged Oh in 2022 after an actress filed a complaint accusing him of inappropriately touching her while the two were on tour for a play in 2017. She was not identified.

The charge carried a potential prison sentence of up to 10 years or a fine of up to 15 million South Korean won (S$15,000). But prosecutors said in February that they would seek a one-year sentence and an employment ban if he were to be convicted.

A few months before he was charged, Oh became the first South Korean to win a Golden Globe, for best supporting actor for his role as Player 001 in Squid Game, a dystopian drama about people who risk their lives in a secretive contest in the hopes of winning a fortune.

Oh was also nominated for a 2022 Emmy for his performance on the show, which is still the most watched series on Netflix.

The actor, who has appeared in more than 200 plays since 1968 and won numerous theatre awards, is considered one of South Korea’s most accomplished stage actors.

The sexual misconduct charge hurt Oh’s career well before the court verdict. He was not included in the cast for Season 2 of Squid Game, scheduled for release in 2024. South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has also stopped airing a government commercial that features him.

Oh will also not appear in an upcoming film called About Family, by South Korean director Yang Woo-seok. The film’s distribution company, Lotte Entertainment, told the local news media in February that it was deleting all of Oh’s scenes and refilming them with another actor, Lee Soon-jae.

In 2023, Oh was dropped from the cast of a South Korean play, Love Letter, about a pair of actors who take turns reading love letters to each other.

His accuser filed a complaint against him in 2021, prompting a police investigation in Seongnam. Prosecutors eventually dropped the case, but the woman appealed to reopen it, and Oh was later charged after more evidence was gathered.

In November 2022, Oh told JTBC, a South Korean broadcaster that first reported the charge, that he had only held the accuser’s hand to guide her way during a walk around a lake. He also said he had apologised to her, not as an admission of wrongdoing, but because she had said she would not make an issue of his behaviour if he did so.

“I am sorry,” he told reporters while walking into his first court hearing in February 2023. “I think I behaved badly.”

But he continued to deny the charge.

Other details of the case have not been made public. The hearings have been closed and the woman has not been identified, in keeping with standard practice for sex crime cases in South Korea.

People convicted of indecent assault in the country become registered sex offenders who are monitored by the police even after completing their prison terms. First-time offenders can receive reduced sentences, or simply a fine.

Since 2018, South Korea’s #MeToo movement has led to accusations of sexual misconduct against an array of prominent men, including powerful figures in the entertainment industry and government.

Some have apologised or resigned. Others have been convicted of rape or other sex crimes and sentenced to long prison terms.
NYTIMES