Squid Game star Oh Young-soo was found guilty of indecent assault Friday and sentenced by a South Korean court to a suspended eight-month prison sentence.
The 79-year-old, who became the first Korean actor to win a Golden Globe for his performance on the hit Netflix drama, was also ordered to complete 40 hours in a sexual violence treatment program, according to The Korea Herald. Oh, who denied wrongdoing, had been charged over allegations of inappropriately touching an actress in 2017.
The woman, who has not been identified, filed a complaint against Oh in 2021 alleging misconduct while the pair were on tour for a play, The New York Times reports. Oh was ultimately charged the following year at the height of his Squid Game success, with the case arriving mere months after his historic Golden Globes win for best supporting actor and an Emmy nomination.
Oh told South Korean cable channel JTBC that he had only held the woman’s hands to “show her the way” during a walk around a lake, according to the Associated Press. The broadcaster also reported that Oh had offered an apology to the woman not as an admission of guilt but because the woman allegedly told him she “wouldn’t raise an issue” about his actions if he did.
“I am sorry,” Oh reportedly told journalists last year. “I think I behaved badly.”
A district court in Seongnam, a city southeast of Seoul, said it took into consideration that Oh had no previous criminal record in its sentence; the charge can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
“The content of the victim’s journal, and the content of her counseling after the incident is consistent with what happened, and her testimonies could not have been given unless she actually experienced it,” the court said in its verdict, according to the Herald.
Oh was not included in the announced cast for Squid Game Season 2, which is set to be released later in 2024. The show, about a deadly game of survival in which contestants risk their lives for a large cash prize, is the most-watched series in Netflix history. The streaming giant released a reality show based on the drama in November.
This post was originally published on Daily Beast
