Court upholds seven-year prison sentence for man convicted of child sexual abuse

[KOREA JOONGANG DAILY]

 
A man convicted of raping and producing sexually exploitative materials involving children under the age of 15 had his appeal rejected by an appellate court, which upheld the original sentence of seven years in prison.
 
The Suwon High Court's Criminal Division 2-2 dismissed the appeal filed by a man convicted of violating the Act on the Protection of Children and Youth Against Sexual Offenses and statutory rape.
 

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The court also ordered a 10-year employment restriction from institutions involving children, teenagers or people with disabilities and imposed five years of probation.
 
“The crimes were committed to satisfy sexual desires against victims whose sexual identities and values were not yet fully developed,” the appellate judges ruled. “Even if this were a first offense, a heavy sentence is inevitable, and thus the defendant’s appeal is denied.”
 
The defendant was indicted on charges of committing sex crimes against children under the age of 15, whom he met through social media from August 2022 to February 2025. He engaged in sexual intercourse with victims in his car and received nude photos. He also filmed himself having sex with the victims and distributed the footage.
 
Investigators found he had stored the exploitative content on his phone and an external hard drive, organizing it by each victim’s age, name and location.
 
A psychiatric evaluation concluded that the defendant had pedophilic disorder.
 
The initial court ruled that the defendant “was fully aware that his actions constituted crimes, yet committed repeated offenses over an extended period against multiple victims on impulse, which makes the nature of the crimes extremely serious.”
 
However, the court also noted that his diagnosis of pedophilic disorder appeared to have played a role in the crimes and acknowledged that this was his first offense in determining the sentence.


This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY JUNG SI-NAE [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]