Seungri, 30, is a singer of the popular boy band BigBang and has been accused of prostitution and gambling.
Seoul:
The disgraced former K-pop star Seungri was convicted of arranging prostitution and other charges over a sex and drug scandal and sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison by a military court.
The 30-year-old singer of the popular boy band BIGBANG, who withdrew from show business when the scandal flared and later enlisted in the military, was found guilty of all nine charges against him, a Defense Ministry official told AFP.
BIGBANG became widely known after their debut in 2006 and Seungri – real name Lee Seung-hyun – became a successful businessman.
He was convicted of arranging sex services for potential investors in his company, as well as gambling abroad at luxury casinos in Las Vegas using illegal foreign exchange transactions.
“It is difficult to see that the defendant was not aware of financial payments to the women for sex,” Judge Hwang Min-je was quoted as saying.
“It appears that he has systematically committed sexual prostitution.”
Seungri had changed his testimony during police questioning and in court, he added, and “lacked credibility”.
His illegal gambling was “serious” given his celebrity status and it continued over a long period of time.
The singer was also ordered to forfeit 1.15 billion won (about $1 million).
As of September 2015, according to the indictment, he arranged prostitutes for foreign investors 24 times over five months.
The investigation into the scandal surrounding him uncovered a wave of allegations against other musicians and staff at YG Entertainment, the former Seungri agency and one of the largest K-pop management firms.
It prompted the agency’s CEO, Yang Hyun-suk, to resign, and faced its own investigations into illegal gambling.
Seungri was a member of a mobile chat room where K-pop singer-songwriter Jung Joon-young – now serving a five-year sentence for gang rape and other crimes – distributed videos of assaults and other encounters.
The revelations shocked the K-pop industry and became the most famous crime involving hidden cameras secretly filming women known as “molka” in South Korea.
Jung appeared as a witness in Seungri’s trial, testifying that he knew that an adult entertainment manager Seungri knew had groomed the women.
The response to the verdict was swift on Thursday, with many users saying online that Seungri’s sentence was too light for the violations.
“Although it is fortunate that he is finally in prison, the term is too short,” writes a user on Naver, the largest portal in the country.
Another added: “It should have been 30 years, not three.”
The verdict came a month before he was due to be discharged from his mandatory military service.
All able-bodied South Korean men are required to serve approximately two years of military service to defend the country against nuclear-armed North Korea, which would technically keep it at war.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
