SEOUL, Dec 27 — Former K-pop idol Taeil, once part of SM Entertainment’s boy band NCT, will remain in prison after South Korea’s Supreme Court rejected his final appeal in a sexual assault case, according to Korea JoongAng Daily.
The country’s top court yesterday upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced Taeil, along with two friends surnamed Lee and Hong, to three years and six months in jail for what is classified as “special quasi-rape” under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes.
The charge applies when sexual assault is committed by two or more people, or against a victim unable to resist due to circumstances such as intoxication.
In addition to the prison term, all three men were ordered to complete 40 hours of sexual violence treatment and barred from working in institutions involving children, adolescents or people with disabilities for five years.
Prosecutors said the trio sexually assaulted a foreign woman who was heavily intoxicated in June last year. Taeil was first investigated by police that same month and questioned in August.
A district court sentenced the men in July, describing the offence as severe and noting that the perpetrators had “took advantage of the victim’s intoxicated and defenceless state to commit sequential acts of sexual assault,” Korea JoongAng Daily reported.
The court also said the victim, a foreign tourist in an unfamiliar place, was likely to have suffered significant psychological trauma. The defendants were taken into custody immediately.
An appellate court dismissed their appeal in October. A further appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected on procedural grounds, effectively confirming the sentence.
Taeil debuted with NCT in 2016 and was active in subunits NCT U and NCT 127.
Following the allegations, SM Entertainment terminated his exclusive contract in October 2024, saying that “given the seriousness of the matter, continuing group activities is no longer possible.”
