Law Firm Jonjae Managing Attorney Noh Jong-eon appears in an interview as the representative for the late Goo Hara's bereaved family

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MBC's current affairs and documentary program 〈PD Notebook〉 investigated in depth the issues in South Korea's sexual crime rulings in the episode 'Judges Are Lenient — The Weight of Sexual Crimes'. In this broadcast, Law Firm Jonjae's Managing Attorney Noh Jong-eon appeared in an interview as the legal representative for the late Ms. Goo Hara's bereaved family.

The late Goo Hara case — a trial over illegally filmed footage

As the legal representative of the late Goo Hara's older brother, Managing Attorney Noh Jong-eon defended the bereaved family in the Choi Jong-bum case. Choi Jong-bum was indicted on multiple charges, including assault, threats, property damage, and coercion, and one of the key issues among them was the 'illegal filming' matter.

Choi Jong-bum threatened the late Goo Hara by sending her illegally filmed footage twice, and he also threatened to report the footage to the media outlet Dispatch.

From a suspended sentence at first trial to a final Supreme Court ruling

The first-trial court found most of the charges, including assault, threats, property damage, and coercion, guilty, but acquitted him of the illegal filming charge and sentenced him to 1 year and 6 months in prison, suspended for 3 years. The court determined that, "Although explicit consent was not obtained, it does not appear that the filming was done against the victim's will."

After this ruling, Goo Hara passed away in November 2019 amid severe suffering.

At the appeals trial, an actual prison sentence of 1 year was handed down and Choi Jong-bum was taken into custody, but the illegal filming charge was again upheld as not guilty. On October 15, 2020, the Supreme Court also finalized the lower court ruling, making the 1-year prison sentence the final punishment, and the acquittal on the illegal filming charge was also finalized.

Immediately after the Supreme Court ruling, Attorney Noh Jong-eon said, "Whether there was implicit consent and whether he endured it because of the special nature of a romantic relationship are clearly separate issues," and added, "It is deeply regrettable that such a ruling was made even though the victim's statements were consistent throughout the trial."

Social questions about sexual crime rulings

The 〈PD Notebook〉 production team focused on the fact that the judge who handled the first trial of this case was later assigned to the Nth Room case, creating the first instance in which a judge was replaced through a public petition. The broadcast analyzed more than 200 sexual crime rulings and pointed out the issues of mechanical sentencing in sexual crime cases and judges' low level of gender sensitivity.

As sexual crimes and illegal filming cases involving famous entertainers such as the Nth Room case, Jung Joon-young, Choi Jong-hoon, and Kang Ji-hwan continue to occur, the core message of this broadcast was that rulings reflecting the proper gender sensitivity for the times must be made, and that the reality in which sexual crime victims suffer secondary harm during trial proceedings must be improved.

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