Oh Young-soo, the award-winning actor from Netflix's Squid Game, has been convicted of sexual misconduct.
The New York Times reports that a South Korean court handed Oh, 79, an "eight-month suspended sentence" and ordered him to attend 40 hours of classes on sexual violence.
A complaint against Oh, one of South Korea's most prominent stage actors, was filed in 2021 by an anonymous female actor with whom he worked on a play in 2017. Prosecutors dropped the case, but the woman successfully appealed to reopen it.
Oh was then charged with indecent assault in November 2022, and publicly denying any wrongdoing at the time. While many of the hearings in the case were closed to the public, Deadline reports that Oh allegedly "hugged a woman and kissed her on the cheek. Last November, he told South Korean broadcaster JTBC that he had only held the accuser's hand to guide her around a lake on a walk.
Now, Deadline reports via Agence France-Presse that judge Jeong Yeon-ju determined the victim's records of the assault and her claims were "consistent ... and appear to be statement that cannot be made without actually experiencing them," adding, "What's written in the victim’s diary, and the counselling report of the victim after the incident pretty much match the details of this case."
Since being charged, Oh has been removed from forthcoming film About Family from South Korean director Woo-Seek Yang, dropped from the cast of South Korean play Love Letter, and had a commercial he featured in from the country's Culture Ministry pulled from the air. He will also not return to cast of Squid Game's second season, expected to arrive this year.
Revisit Exclaim!'s review of Squid Game Season 1.
