‘Squid Game’ Actor Found Guilty of Sexual Misconduct

A South Korean court on Friday convicted Oh Young-soo, an actor who won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a contestant in the Netflix survival drama “Squid Game,” of indecent assault.

A district court judge in Seongnam, a city southeast of Seoul, found Mr. Oh guilty of inappropriately hugging an actress, holding her hand and kissing her cheek in 2017.

Mr. Oh, 79, was given an eight-month suspended sentence and ordered to attend 40 hours of classes on sexual violence. Mr. Oh, who had publicly denied the charge, told reporters after the verdict that he planned to appeal.

Prosecutors charged Mr. Oh in 2022 after an actress, who was not identified, filed a complaint accusing him of inappropriately touching her. They argued that, across multiple occasions in August and September 2017, Mr. Oh had hugged the woman, held her hand, kissed her cheek and laid in her rented room, where he made potentially inappropriate sexual comments, Judge Jeong Yeon-ju said.

The actress told others about her experience at the time and wrote about them in her diary, Judge Jeong said. She received sexual violence counseling in March 2018. She tried to forget her distressful memories for some time, until the success of “Squid Game” in 2021 prompted the woman to demand an apology from Mr. Oh about his actions, for which Mr. Oh apologized, the judge said.

Mr. Oh denied kissing the woman, claimed that he had held her hand to help her carry things, and said that his apology to her was not an admission of guilt, the judge said. Mr. Oh’s lawyers also argued that the woman’s narrative was inconsistent. But the judge found her accusations credible.