A long journey toward justice: The heavy questions that the YouTuber Kwak Hyeol-su case asks us > News

The core of this case is the prosecution's request for 7 years in prison for taxi driver Jeong, who was indicted on charges of quasi-rape and causing serious injury. The prosecution emphasized the seriousness of the case by requesting not only a prison sentence for the defendant, but also an order to complete a sexual violence treatment program, disclosure and notification of personal information for 10 years, and an order to wear an electronic anklet. This is interpreted as the result of going beyond a simple crime against a drunk passenger and taking into account the professional status of betrayal of trust and past criminal convictions. In particular, the perpetrator has completely denied the allegations since immediately after the incident and has continued to make absurd claims such as that the victim had made inappropriate demands on him. This attitude of the perpetrator revealed in court clearly shows that he cannot escape from the typical perpetrator-centered logic of distorting the victim's statement and blaming her for memory errors, let alone reflecting on it.

After hearing the news of the court's sentence, victim Kwak Hyeol-soo expressed his anger, evaluating it as a 'complete victory' and 'implementation of justice.' The pain she suffered was not limited to physical harm. The victim's daily life was destroyed for more than a year after the incident, and the circumstances of the destruction of evidence, such as car wash records that the perpetrator failed to submit and black box data that he claimed was broken, further tormented the victim throughout the trial process. What was even more unfortunate was the secondary harm inflicted by anonymous members of the public after the victim reported the truth of the incident. Comments and malicious criticism that force victims to be victims have dug deeper into the victim's wounds, becoming a clear indicator of how immature our society treats victims of sexual crimes.

The issues in the trial were boiled down to the credibility of the victim's statement and whether it was consistent with objective evidence. The defense took advantage of the fact that the victim was intoxicated at the time to raise the possibility of memory distortion, and even used medical records as evidence to maintain the claim that there was no sexual assault. However, the victim has maintained consistent statements since the beginning of the incident, complaining of the specific circumstances of the crime committed by the perpetrator and the physical pain it caused. The prosecution also strongly supports the perpetrator's crime based on the psychological and physical aftereffects, such as bipolar affective disorder, suffered by the victim. As phone records and circumstantial evidence played in court are peeling away the perpetrator's lies one by one, attention is being paid to what decision the court will make at the sentencing hearing scheduled for July 10th.

This incident went beyond the damage of one individual and formed a social discourse that expanded into calls for legislation on 'non-consensual rape' and the '2025 MeToo movement'. The fact that Kwak Hyeol-soo revealed his face and took direct complaint and legal action was an expression of his strong will to change the absurd reality in which victims had to hide. Her courage became a message of solidarity for countless people experiencing similar pain, and once again reminded people that sexual crimes are social crimes, not individual misfortunes. The fact that the offender has a history of being punished for similar offenses in the past suggests how much stricter our society's judicial system must be in order to prevent repeat offenses. When the sentence of 7 years in prison leads to sentencing and results in actual punishment, social justice will finally be able to take a step forward.