It is the kind of story you would expect on a Netflix crime documentary: a blackmail plot, a leaked sex video, a family deception and an international footballer who has gone from being the victim to the accused.
That player is on the books of Nottingham Forest and currently in Spain with the rest of head coach Nuno Espirito Santo’s squad, where the Premier League club are preparing for a series of pre-season fixtures.
Hwang Ui-jo, a South Korea international with 62 caps, was charged by prosecutors in his homeland’s capital Seoul last week for allegedly filming sexual encounters with two women without permission on four occasions from June to September 2022. He has been ruled out of contention for selection by the South Korean national team since last November and, if convicted, the offences carry up to a maximum seven years in prison.
“The victim hopes the truth will prevail and that Hwang learns his lesson and realises how much damage his actions have caused,” Lee Eun-eui, the lawyer representing one of the women, has told The Athletic. “To be honest, the victim is in such a state of disbelief and pain she can’t even articulate what she wants to see happen next.”
Court proceedings are scheduled to begin next month.
That, however, tells only part of a story that has already involved one criminal trial, culminating in one of Hwang’s family members going to prison, and intensified a national debate in South Korea about the issue of “molka”, when videos are secretly filmed for sexual purposes. Molka is an abbreviation of mollae-kamera, meaning “sneaky camera.”
Hwang celebrates a goal for Korea in November 2023, before the national team later ruled him unavailable for selection (Photo: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)
Hwang, who denies breaking the law, is a former Korean footballer of the year who played in every game for his country at the 2022 World Cup and has an international career stretching back almost a decade.
He signed for Forest in summer 2022 from Bordeaux, following their relegation from France’s top flight, for £4million ($5.2m) but has spent the past two seasons on loan at four other clubs, including Norwich City of the Championship, English football’s second tier, and is yet to make his official Forest debut.
The 31-year-old striker has been under intense scrutiny since June last year when an Instagram account posted explicit clips from a sex video involving a woman who, it is alleged, had no idea she was being filmed. The person posting the images claimed to be one of Hwang’s former lovers, and was accusing him of having relationships with numerous women, of gaslighting them and secretly filming sexual encounters without consent.
“A lot of women have experienced a similar pattern,” read one post. “He is seeing celebrities, influencers and non-celebrities all at the same time. I don’t know how many victims there will be.”
Hwang’s management company, UJ Sports, described the allegations as “baseless rumours and sexual slurs” and brought in lawyers to take action against the anonymous account. But a different account was set up to continue the threats. In follow-up messages, Hwang was warned “there are many videos”, and that “it would be fun” if they were released.
“I have not done anything illegal,” Hwang responded in a hand-written statement released via his lawyers. “The post (on Instagram) is baseless. I don’t know the person who shared that post. He or she is a criminal who has threatened me by defaming me and using videos from my personal life.”
When police started investigating, however, they uncovered a remarkable series of clues that revealed the poster was not one of Hwang’s ex-partners, after all.
By tracking down the perpetrator’s IP address, the police found out the messages were sent to Hwang from his own house. His sister-in-law, it transpired, was at the property at the time. She was there on the basis that she worked for Hwang as his personal manager. And that was the moment the investigation took a remarkable twist: everything had been sent from her laptop.
The sister-in-law’s name has never been released, other than her surname being Lee, but it has been reported in South Korea that she and her husband — Hwang’s older brother — were directors of UJ Sports, working on behalf of the footballer.
Hwang in pre-season action for Forest in 2023. He is at their pre-season camp this month (Photo: Bradley Collyer/PA Images via Getty Images)
In police interviews, she denied any wrongdoing and claimed she was being framed by someone who had hacked her account. Over time, however, the evidence began to build up. Investigators were suspicious when it turned out she had wiped her phone with a factory reset after being called in for questioning. She claimed it was to “protect private information” on behalf of her brother-in-law.
Hwang, it was reported, had let her borrow one of his old phones when she went on a trip to South America. That meant she had access, potentially, to his passwords and everything stored on his accounts.
The sister-in-law was charged with violating South Korea’s laws relating to sex crimes and committing blackmail. And, eventually, she confessed to everything.
“I wanted to teach him a lesson, as he didn’t acknowledge the sacrifice that my husband and I have made for him,” she explained in a letter to the Seoul Central District Court. “(We) gave up everything in Korea, moved abroad for Hwang’s success and looked after him for five years. But my husband and Hwang had a disagreement last year while Hwang was preparing to return (to Forest after one of his loan spells).
“I felt betrayed by Hwang for not acknowledging my husband’s hard work. I felt more betrayed because I also left everything behind in Korea, giving up my dream and education to follow my husband for Hwang, spending lonely days abroad.”
She was sentenced to three years in prison (the prosecution had asked for four) and told the court her crimes stemmed from anger about Hwang “being ungrateful”. She apologised for her behaviour, describing herself as being “blindsided by revenge”, and said she wished she could turn back time:
“While managing his private life, I came across a video of Hwang having sexual intercourse with a woman. So I tried to threaten Hwang so he would realise he depended on us (herself and her husband). The only intention was to teach Hwang a lesson. I edited the video so the woman’s face would not be exposed. I never thought of ruining Hwang’s career or harming the woman. I will receive my punishment without downplaying or hiding my crime … and live with remorse for the rest of my life.”
The case has attracted considerable publicity in South Korea given Hwang’s stardom and the added intrigue that he appeared at one point to take his sister-in-law’s side, describing the investigation as a “misunderstanding”.
He has always been aware, however, that at the same time that investigation was launched last summer, a separate police inquiry was underway into whether he had permission to film his lover during sex.
Hwang returned to England last summer for pre-season training with Forest before joining Norwich on September 1, in what was supposed to be a season-long arrangement. Instead, the loan was cut short in January after he managed only three goals in 17 appearances and he spent the rest of the campaign with a club in Turkey.
His best moment in a Norwich shirt was a spectacular long-range goal against Watford on November 28. What few people in the crowd would have known was that, 10 days earlier, he had been questioned by police in Seoul for the first time and his mobile phone was seized as potential evidence.
Hwang celebrates his spectacular goal for Norwich against Watford (Photo: Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
Three days after that, Hwang played for his country in a 3-0 win against China. Jurgen Klinsmann, a World Cup-winning striker with Germany in his playing days, was South Korea’s manager at the time and said the claims against his player were merely “speculations”.
“It is not confirmed that he is guilty and, until then, Hwang is our player,” Klinsmann added.
Others were less impressed about Hwang’s involvement. The Civic Network for Justice in Sport, a campaign group based in Seoul, demanded an apology from the Korean Football Association (KFA).
“(Hwang) must have self-reflection and willingly surrender his position as a member of the team,” read a statement. “(The KFA) should have disqualified Hwang until the situation is resolved.”
There was no apology, but the KFA announced the following week that Hwang would not be available for selection – ruling him out of the Asian Cup (Asia’s equivalent of the Euros or Copa America or Africa Cup of Nations) played in January and February this year – until “a clear conclusion is reached on the facts.”
[GOAL] 🇰🇷대한민국 5-0 🇹🇲투르크메니스탄
손흥민의 환상적인 탈압박 그리고 이어지는
황의조 뒷 발…ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ
⠀⠀⠀#대한민국 #축구 #국가대표팀 #월드컵예선 pic.twitter.com/xQHTLirrGM— theKFA (@theKFA) June 5, 2021
Lee Young-nam, who headed the KFA’s ethics committee, said a player for the national team had to “carry himself with a high level of morality and responsibility”.
“A national team player must maintain the honour of representing the country,” the same official added. “We took into account that a player carefully has to manage his personal life. We also looked into how this decision will affect the rest of the team and how his presence on the field would make our fans feel.”
In the midst of all this, several text messages were disclosed to the Korean media showing Hwang’s alleged conversations with his former lover after the sex video was leaked on the internet.
One of the woman’s messages, shared by her legal team, read: “I clearly said no.” Another asked: “How come there is a video after I said no?”
According to the leaked messages, she also wrote: “You need to admit you committed an illegal action.”
Hwang is alleged to have replied: “I am trying to stop (this situation) as much as I can.”
His legal representatives say: “The video was filmed on Hwang’s mobile phone and not taken illegally, as Hwang and the woman watched the video together after filming it.”
“The victim had no idea this video existed until it was in circulation,” the woman’s lawyer, Lee Eun-eui, told The Athletic. “The only reason why she even knew there was a video was because Hwang contacted her in the process of trying to prosecute the person who had distributed it.
“The moment she discovered this, she considered her life ruined and was in absolute despair. Hwang apologised and acknowledged the victim’s outrage but tried to explain that what he had done was not technically illegal. This claim itself is not only ridiculous but it makes one question Hwang’s concept of boundaries.”
Lee Eun-eui, pictured in 2018, says “the victim is in such a state of disbelief” (Photo: YELIM LEE/AFP via Getty Images)
An eight-month investigation led to Hwang being informed last week that he was being indicted for alleged breaches of South Korea’s Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office had also considered adding secondary charges against Hwang and his legal representatives for allegedly revealing details that could identify the first woman in the video but decided in the end not to take it any further.
“When the person who shared the video online was identified as Hwang’s sister-in-law, Hwang had urged the victim to settle and cooperate,” said Lee Eun-eui. “When the victim persisted and refused to settle, Hwang and his legal team decided to release personal data about the victim, including her marital and employment status.
“The victim felt so threatened and scared she contemplated suicide. The victim is still in a state of shock, very distressed and uneasy about the entire ordeal. The fact she still has no idea how Hwang was able to obtain the video is troubling, and the fact it is out in the open makes her very nervous. Not only is this stressful to the victim herself, but to her entire family as well.”
Lee Eun-eui has become a prominent figure in Seoul since winning a lawsuit relating to the sexual harassment she experienced while working in sales for Samsung Electro-Mechanics, a company so large and powerful in South Korea that the country is often referred to as the “Republic of Samsung.” She built a new career as a lawyer and became a powerful ally for the #MeToo movement helping other South Korean women with sex-abuse cases.
“There is really no way to take back what has happened, and there are no words to describe how much the victim has suffered,” she said of the Hwang case. “I know this may be a strange comparison but, if this was a case of rape, perhaps the victim could heal over time, knowing that it was a one-off event that she can work through to bring some closure. However, digital sexual abuse is a completely different story.
“If Hwang hadn’t secretly filmed and hidden this video for such a long period of time, perhaps this wouldn’t have become the situation that it is now, where something so personal has been widely distributed on the web, open for anyone to view and download. This is not something we can take back, ever. Even in the midst of all this, Hwang is making the victim out to be a liar and adding insult to injury.”
Hwang plays against Portugal at the 2022 World Cup but his football future is now uncertain (Photo: Ayman Aref/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Hwang, whose career began in his homeland at Seongnam FC and included two successful years with Gamba Osaka in Japan, has declined to respond to these comments or make any statement. His legal representatives have not responded to an approach from The Athletic.
As for Forest, everything has worked out in a way they could never have imagined, given that the idea at the time of Hwang’s signing was that he would play for Olympiacos of Greece and not for them in the Premier League. The deal was arranged via Forest because both clubs are owned by the Greek billionaire Evangelos Marinakis.
As it turned out, Hwang’s season-long loan to Olympiacos in 2022-23 was cut short, leading to a short-term loan arrangement with FC Seoul in the January, and when he arrived in Nottingham for the first time, his only involvement for manager Steve Cooper’s team was as an unused substitute in two of their first three matches of last season. Nuno, appointed after Cooper was fired in December, had zero dealings with Hwang until recently, when the player reported for pre-season training.
Forest are aware of the allegations but have decided at this stage not to take any action of their own. Hwang, in other words, remains available for selection, even if it has always been the case that Forest’s intention was to move him out this summer. Even before all this blew up, it was clear he had no real future at the City Ground.
For the time being, however, Forest are paying Hwang’s salary and have a player on their books whose alleged offences risk putting off many potential buyers.
In January, Hwang was made the subject of a travel ban preventing him from leaving South Korea. This, it was reported, was because he had declined to be interviewed by the police on December 27, having already been spoken to three times in the previous six weeks. Hwang, it was reported, had complained that the questioning was excessive.
The travel ban was dropped 10 days later and the following week he joined Alanyaspor of Turkey’s top-flight Super Lig on loan for the rest of the season.
Forest are working out what to do next and, in the meantime, the lawyers in Seoul are preparing for a trial.
“Hwang is celebrated here as a beloved footballer for the Korean national team and, as such, I think he is getting special treatment and leniency from all aspects of this process,” says Lee Eun-eui. “The victim feels she is fighting an uphill battle, but she truly hopes that justice will be served because she believes in the truth.”
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