Cho Ju-bin, serving 47 years for 'Nth Room' crimes, loses constitutional bid to cut sentence

Cho Ju-bin, the operator of the Telegram "Doctor's Room" channel who is serving a combined 47 years and four months in prison for producing and distributing sexual exploitation material involving minors, has failed in a constitutional challenge he filed in hopes of reducing his sentence.

According to legal sources, the Constitutional Court unanimously rejected Cho's petition on July 23, in which he sought a ruling on whether Article 383, Clause 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is unconstitutional.

Cho was sentenced in October 2021 to 42 years in prison after the Supreme Court upheld convictions for blackmailing dozens of female victims — including minors — into producing sexual exploitation material between May 2019 and February 2020, and selling and distributing the content through the "Doctor's Room" channel on Telegram.

In February 2024, the Supreme Court added four months to his sentence following a separate indictment on charges of forcible indecent conduct.

Cho was additionally indicted in September 2022 on charges including sexually exploiting and raping a victim who was a minor in 2019, and the Supreme Court added five years to his sentence in December last year.

During the Supreme Court appeal in that case, Cho filed a motion requesting a constitutional review. He argued that because the five-year sentence handed down by the lower courts, combined with the previously finalized 42 years and four months, exceeded 10 years in total, he should be entitled under the Code of Criminal Procedure to appeal on grounds of factual error or improper sentencing.

Article 383, Clause 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows appeals on grounds of serious factual error or grossly improper sentencing only in cases where a sentence of death, life imprisonment, or 10 or more years has been handed down.

After the Supreme Court rejected his motion and dismissed his appeal, Cho filed the constitutional petition.

The Constitutional Court rejected it, saying that when a court reviews charges in a consecutive-offense relationship with a case already finalized by an earlier ruling, it cannot revisit or revise the facts or sentencing in the already-finalized portion.

The court said doing so would contradict the binding force of a finalized ruling, and that the scope of review in a Supreme Court appeal is limited to the portions of the lower court's decision that were actually appealed.

The court added that accepting Cho's argument would expand the grounds for appeal without allowing the Supreme Court to actually review the finalized portion of the sentence, increasing the court's burden — an outcome it said "does not align with the rational allocation of limited judicial resources."