SEOUL: The death of a former actress has renewed public scrutiny of a decades-old sexual assault case, with a petition calling for a parliamentary hearing and special counsel drawing more than 41,000 signatures as of Tuesday (Jan 6) morning.
The petition, posted on Dec 25, 2025 to the National Assembly’s online platform, urges lawmakers to reopen the case and investigate what it describes as secondary harm inflicted on the victim during the original probe, including alleged misconduct by suspects and police investigators.
“Even the court called (the case) a ‘disastrous failure of the state system.’ The truth about how the victim was forced to drop charges must come out,” the petitioner, identified by the surname Jo, wrote.
As of 11.15am Tuesday, the petition had collected 41,314 signatures, reaching about 83 per cent of the 50,000 required for automatic referral to a standing committee.
If the threshold is met by Jan 25, lawmakers will be required to review the case.
The victim, surnamed Yang, was a 34-year-old graduate student who worked as an extra in the entertainment industry at the time.
Between August and November 2004, she was believed to have been raped by four men working at a broadcasting station and sexually harassed by eight others. Yang filed criminal charges in December 2004 but withdrew them in July 2005.
According to her mother, Yang was subjected to verbal abuse and threats from the suspects during the investigation, as well as possible secondary victimization by investigators.
The mother alleged that Yang was made to sit face to face with the suspects, who denied the allegations and mocked her testimony.
Yang died by suicide on Aug. 28, 2009, after jumping from a building. Her younger sister died in the same manner on Sept. 3.
Their father died of a stroke on Nov. 3 of the same year, reportedly after suffering severe shock from the deaths of his two daughters.
The victim’s mother, surnamed Jang, later filed a civil lawsuit seeking damages from the suspects but lost the case in 2015.
While the court said there were grounds to believe Yang had been subjected to sexual assault, it ruled that the claim had been filed after the three-year statute of limitations had expired.
The suspects also sued Jang for defamation after she staged one-person protests and publicly named them. The court ruled in her favor.
“The court cannot help but feel deep sense of frustration and sadness at the pain suffered by the mother and daughter, which was amplified by the disastrous failure of the state system,” the court said in its ruling, a passage cited in the petition and widely interpreted as acknowledging that the crime had occurred.
In March 2018, the National Police Agency launched a task force to investigate alleged secondary harm by police but concluded without concrete findings, citing the passage of time. The statute of limitations for major police crimes, including abuse of authority, is seven years.
In 2020, it emerged that several suspects were working as production staff at a subcontractor for a major broadcaster. The broadcaster said the company was unaware of the case and removed the staff members from production.
Jang, now in her 70s, is involved in about 30 defamation lawsuits, according to the petition.
“A loving family of four has been reduced to just the mother (52 at the time), and she has been fighting for an apology from the 12 suspects, police and prosecution. She is engaging in a lone fight to demand an apology for the human rights violation,” Jo wrote.
Although the case was never legally concluded as rape due to the withdrawal of charges, the government in 2018 held a funeral and memorial service for Yang and her sister, nine years after their deaths.
The ceremony took place at the National Medical Center, where then-Gender Equality Minister Jung Hyun-baek paid her respects.
“The ministry will make sure such tragedy does not occur again, so the deaths of these two will not have been in vain,” Jung told reporters after meeting the sisters’ mother. - The Korea Herald/ANN
