Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
80,000 rally behind young woman who died after police dropped sexual assault case
Kim Soon-hwan, secretary-general of the Seomin Minsaeng Measures Committee, speaks to reporters at Seoul Yeongdeungpo Police Station in Seoul, Monday. Newsis
By Jung Min-ho
More than 80,000 people have signed a petition calling for a renewed investigation after a 19-year-old woman died by suicide in late February following a police decision to drop her sexual assault case.
As of Thursday, the petition posted on the National Assembly site on April 16 has collected 80,900 signatures, surpassing the 50,000-signature threshold that obligates the Assembly to formally review it.
The case centers on a woman who filed a criminal complaint in December 2025 against her employer at a bar in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, accusing the owner, a man in his 40s, of quasi-rape. She told police that she had drunk heavily, blacked out and later came to her senses to find him on top of her and engaged in sexual activity.
Police, however, accepted the owner’s claim that it was consensual and decided not to send the case to the prosecution, citing CCTV footage that showed the two smiling and talking to each other before and after the encounter.
Days after being informed of the conclusion, the woman, who had been an aspiring police officer, according to her family, fell to her death from a tall building on Feb. 21. She left a message asking that the objection to the police decision stored on her phone be submitted on her behalf
In the petition, her family said the investigation relied on a single round of questioning of both victim and suspect, CCTV footage selectively submitted by the suspect and testimonies from a limited number of witnesses.
“We can hardly begin to fathom how she must have felt — unable to tell her parents what had happened, unable even to break down in sobs, resolved to die, and yet, until just a few hours before her death, concealing it all and showing no sign of distress to her family,” the petitioner wrote.
At the time her statement was taken, her blood alcohol concentration was 0.085 percent — above the 0.08 percent threshold at which a driver’s license can be revoked in drunk-driving cases. Her family says the investigation was closed without any medical or forensic review of what that level of intoxication meant for her ability to resist or give consent.
On April 12, activists filed a complaint with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, accusing the investigators of the case at Ansan Danwon Police Station of offenses including distortion of the law.
On April 20, Seoul Yeongdeungpo Police Station questioned Kim Soon-hwan, the secretary-general of the civic group behind the complaint, as the complainant in the case.