Singer Taeil (31, birth name Moon Tae-il), formerly of the idol group NCT, has received a finalized prison sentence of 3 years and 6 months on charges of rape. The Supreme Court dismissed Taeil's appeal.
According to legal sources on the 27th, the Supreme Court's First Division (Presiding Justice Seo Kyung-hwan) finalized the lower court's sentence for Taeil and his friends, a person surnamed Lee and a person surnamed Hong, who were indicted on charges of quasi-rape under the Act on the Punishment of Sexual Crimes and Protection of Victims Thereof, by dismissing their appeals the previous day.
Taeil and two others were brought to trial on charges of raping a foreign woman who was intoxicated. Taeil was booked by police in June last year and underwent his first summons for questioning in August that year.
SM Entertainment, then his agency, said, "We recognize the matter is very grave and have determined he can no longer continue team activities," and officially announced Taeil's departure from the team.
Prosecutors earlier sought seven years, and on July 1 this year the court of first instance said, "They took advantage of the victim's state of being unable to resist due to intoxication and had intercourse in sequence; the nature of the crime is very bad," and sentenced Taeil, Lee, and Hong to 3 years and 6 months in prison and remanded them into custody in court.
The court said, "The victim was a foreign tourist who suffered a crime in an unfamiliar place and appears to have suffered great psychological pain."
At the second trial held on Oct., the court found no issue with this assessment and dismissed their appeal. Taeil and others appealed again, but the Supreme Court ruled the grounds for appeal were improper and dismissed the case.
Meanwhile, they were also ordered to complete 40 hours of a sexual-violence treatment program and were given a five-year employment restriction order for institutions related to children, juveniles, and people with disabilities.