Yoo Jae-hwan appeals to Supreme Court, denying groping charges: 'We only high-fived'

Composer and broadcaster Yoo Jae-hwan, fined 5 million won ($3,400) on charges of groping a woman he met through an offer of free music composition services, has denied the charges and appealed to the Supreme Court.

According to legal sources, Yoo filed the appeal Thursday.

Yoo was indicted on charges of groping a woman he had met after posting on social media in June 2023, offering to compose music for free.

Throughout the trial, Yoo denied the charges, arguing that it was "hard to imagine" he would have groped a woman he had just met in a public place while risking his broadcasting career, and that the accounts given by the witness and the alleged victim were inconsistent.

The first court nonetheless found him guilty in November last year, imposing the 5 million won fine and ordering him to complete 40 hours of a sexual violence treatment program. The appeals court upheld both the conviction and the sentence at its ruling Wednesday.

The appeals court said the alleged victim had testified consistently on key points from the investigation through to the lower court proceedings, and that her account was detailed enough that it could not be dismissed as fabricated. It added that objective evidence — including her live re-enactment of the incident during testimony, and the content of a conversation and phone call she had with a witness surnamed Jeong immediately after the incident — corroborated her account and supported its credibility.

Immediately after the ruling, however, Yoo again denied the charges in remarks to Star News. "The alleged victim says I touched her, but as far as I know, she testified that she was the one who suggested going to a noraebang, that we sang together there for about an hour and a half, and that nothing happened at the time — which contradicts what she is claiming now," he said. He added: "I was active in the entertainment industry at the time, and people recognized me outside. There is no way I could have done something like that. When we said goodbye, I gave a high-five — that was it. There was no physical contact of the kind the alleged victim is describing."

Yoo first became widely known through his appearance on MBC's "Infinite Challenge" and went on to appear in numerous variety programs. In 2024, he became embroiled in controversy after allegedly accepting payment from aspiring singers under the pretense of composing songs for them as a charitable service, then failing to deliver the music. He was reported to police on fraud charges, but investigators closed the case without indictment due to insufficient evidence.