Seungri Defends Himself In Court And Denies All Charges Of Prostitution

Former BIGBANG‘s Seungri attended a trial at the General Military Court on June 30, 2021. During the trial, he claims to have made a typo in one of the incriminating KakaoTalk messenger messages that were presented in court.

As he was placed under charges for prostitution, the prosecution questioned some text message conversations he had exchanged in one of the group chats. The messages are reported to the state, “Girls? Go with ones that give well.” It was reported that the messages were exchanged when Seungri had visited a club with a foreign acquaintance of his. In the group chat, one of the staff members had asked about how to best receive the foreign guest, and Seungri had replied as such. This led to suspicions of prostitution from what the words infer.

However, Seungri states that the messages were from 7 years ago, and that he had remembered sending the message as “Go with ones who play well” instead. He denied claims of prostitution, stating that it was due to auto-correct as he was using an iPhone, that the message was sent as “Go with ones who give well” instead.

I did not know about it and only realized it during the investigation process. I think it was a typo due to the iPhone’s autocorrect function. Although I’m sorry about it, that’s what I remember of it.

— Seungri

When asked about the 2015 Christmas party where he was accused of hiring prostitutes to receive Japanese businessmen, Seungri denied the claims that it had stemmed from him.

On my birthday near the year-end, in order to repay the people from various countries that congratulated me, including Koji Aoyama and his wife, I invited various foreign acquaintances to a huge Christmas party that I had planned. As I was busy taking care of my own acquaintances, I only found out that they had called girls over during the investigations

— Seungri

Seungri apologized to the people who have been following the court case but claims to remember the text messages as such. He denied that he was aware of the prostitution that Yuri Holdings ex-CEO, Yoo In Seok, was conducting. Yoo In Seok had already admitted to the charges in an earlier trial.

Seungri further denied claims of hosting prostitution out of his own home, stating that his parents and younger sibling stay right next door.

My parents and younger brother live next door to me. They know my password and drop by regularly. As I am unable to know when they would drop by, it is not possible for me to have hosted prostitution in my own home. Furthermore, I was very busy with promotions at that point in time. I was not in the position where I could pay anyone to have such relations with me, neither did I have to.

— Seungri

Regarding the infamous “Jung Joon Young KakaoTalk Room“, Seungri claimed that he was unable to check every message that comes to him.

The contents of that KakaoTalk room is not my entire life. I am in over 10 group chats and apart from that, I operate about 5 other different social media. In just over an hour, I have over 500 messages. I cannot check and acknowledge each of them just because I received that message. Also, that KakaoTalk room was one where only friends had gathered, so unsavory words were exchanged. I didn’t know they would be revealed. I apologize to the public.

— Seungri

Prior to the trial, Seungri had been initially charged with 8 different charges of violating the act on aggravated punishment of specific economic crimes, violation of food sanitation act, illegal use of cameras, sex-trafficking, habitual gambling, violation of foreign exchange laws, embezzlement, and sexual assault.