Reality Bites Back

In South Korea,

K-Pop stars have fame, fortune and millions of female fans.

But some

led a double life.

A hidden world

where videos of women being drugged, raped and humiliated were shared.

There was a room deep in the club.

Whatever were to happen in there

you wouldn't hear anything.

Their crimes would never have been revealed,

had secret messages between them not been leaked.

This is the story of those

who tried to bring them to justice.

After coming back home

I was in shock.

Should I begin with the police collusion?

The sexual assaults?

Or the illegal filming?

I didn't know where to start.

It was overwhelming.

Hey, friend.

My name is Kang Kyung-yoon.

If you ask me

why I became an entertainment journalist,

I feel that what's happening in this industry

is like a microcosm of our society.

Money, power, women, sex...

The more I work in this field,

the more I see

the bottom of the pit.

Society's true face.

The fuze that ignited

this scandal was a K-Pop star caught secretly filming a woman.

A crime known as Molka.

'Molka' is a word that only exists in Korean.

The correct term is illegally filmed footage.

A woman who is unaware

is captured in a situation where she can feel humiliation.

There are so many places where molka could happen.

In public places

like changing rooms or toilets.

It can be taken between people in a relationship

in order to destroy someone's life.

Once filmed, it can be distributed.

I am journalist Park Hyo-sil.

I was the first reporter to break the story that Jung

was accused of a sexual offence on September 23, 2016.

The tip-off we received

was that Jung secretly filmed his girlfriend

and she accused him of molka.

Jung had risen to fame as a singer songwriter, self releasing love ballads like “Amy’.

He had an edgier image than the typical K-Pop star.

He was critically acclaimed

and hugely popular with female fans.

I published the story on Friday evening

at 10:50pm as breaking news.

Following that, many media outlets

went into a frenzy to corroborate the story.

If we call her by the alias Kyung-mi.

While they were having sex at his house

Jung filmed molka

and Kyung-mi caught him in the act.

Concerned that the video might be distributed

Kyung-mi later reported the incident as molka.

Two days later, Jung is questioned by the police.

During the investigation

a major issue arose

when he didn't give his phone to the police.

Had he submitted his phone to the police

they would have run a forensics test

Maybe he was worried that deleted files could be restored.

That's why he consulted his lawyer

and left his phone with a private forensics company.

On finding the phone is with a forensics lab,

the police asked for a report

rather than looking at the phone themselves.

It became clear the investigation was rushed

with the intention of simply closing the case.

A recording of Jung's lawyer

putting pressure on the forensics lab was later leaked.

We talked with the police and they'll be there soon.

The reason I called is

it doesn't matter to us whether it can be restored or not

but the police suggested it would be best

to say it's impossible to restore.

It's just an unnecessary legal case.

Jung's agency

hastily calls a press conference to clear his name.

I never imagined that what was supposed to be

a joke between the two of us

would become public

and develop into such a big scandal.

I was wrong to think

that everything would go away

if I was innocent.

Public opinion framed Jung

as the innocent victim.

This created a narrative where the media was the villain

and I bore the brunt of it.

Jung's phone is never checked

by the police, and he thinks he is in the clear.

What he didn't know is that a carbon copy had been made of his phone data.

Three years later, someone with access to the data decides to leak it.

It eventually reaches journalist Kang.

The KakaoTalk material I received

contained Jung's chat messages that he shared

between 2015 and 2016.

Jung's phone data showed

he was in a chat group with male friends on popular Messenger app KakaoTalk.

Hey, friend.

My heart still hurts when I think of that group chat.

I had no idea it would be that serious.

I had thought that the issue would be

whether the molka of Kyung-mi

from 2016 was in there

as was reported in the media.

The video of Kyung Mi wasn't there.

But Kang did find many other videos of Jung with women.

And began to recognise other famous faces too.

This video shows Jung encouraging a girl to drink alcohol with his fellow K-Pop star,

Choi Jong-hoon.

Choi, do it again. It was ******* sexy.

It was ******* sexy, that kiss.

Really?

Yes.

It was ******* sexy.

I don't want to.

Do it just one more time.

Choi Jong-hoon led the K-Pop rock band FT Island.

He played lead guitar and was given centre stage in their stadium concerts.

Choi, inside that chatroom, was just like Jung

incredibly obsessed with women.

but in terms of power relationships,

he was obedient.

He rarely initiated anything.

He did what Seungri told him to do.

The biggest celebrity in the chat group was megastar Seungri.

He had become famous in the K-Pop supergroup Big Bang,

and also had a solo career.

Branding himself the Jay Gatsby of Korea,

his party lifestyle was recorded in slick promo videos.

Like Gatsby from the film ©The Great Gatsby',

he succeeded at a young age

and was one of the few in the country

who could throw the grandest of parties.

So he nicknamed himself 'Seungstby'

and likened himself to Gatsby.

Kang begins going through the KakaoTalk messages chronologically,

tracking the secret life of the celebrity friends.

The data starts in late 2015,

as Seungri hosts a series of parties to celebrate his birthday.

Seungri has invited potential business partners

and warns Jung to be on his best behaviour.

Seungri had investors in Japan

in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China too.

So, when he went there, with his reputation,

he was able to make contact with the wealthiest people

and he saw a major business opportunity.

I think Seungri thought "I could really become one of the richest men in Korea".

Seungri was using women as a tool

to get investment from wealthy people.

A month later,

Jung, Choi, and four other chat group members go skiing in a resort near Seoul.

This promotional film shows off

the five star facilities.

It's in KakaoTalk messages from this trip

that Kang sees evidence of serious sexual assault.

Choi and Jung's group

invited some of Choi's female friends

to a ski resort.

They shared drinks together.

And the women say that not long after the drinks,

they lost almost all their memory.

At 8 p.m.,

a friend of Seungri uploads a video to the chat group

to share with Seungri, who was not on the trip.

In that situation, several illegally filmed items emerged.

One was a photo taken from the first floor

looking down onto the ground floor

another was a video of a man and woman having sex

filmed from behind, through an open door, like it was a joke.

The images appear to show the rape of unconscious women

by another chat group member, a friend of Jung and Choi.

I had enough suspicion the women were completely unaware.

However, I didn't understand how they took this,

who the victims were,

and why these men took such photos.

That was a question for me.

Kang begins to see a pattern of abuse.

She finds messages from two months later that directly incriminate

two of the K-Pop stars in sexual crimes.

An incident took place in March 2016

when Jung had a fan signing event in Daegu.

The day before at a nearby hotel

One woman was raped while she was unconscious.

The woman had been gang raped by Jung and Choi.

With other friends and members of the chat group present.

They say, 'she was so drunk she almost cracked her head'.

Most of their fans are female

but these chats had exposed the real face of these men