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A court in Seoul has sentenced the director of a state-funded care home for people with intellectual disabilities to 15 years in prison for the repeated rape and sexual assault of three female residents, a case that has ignited national outrage and exposed deep failures in South Korea's system of residential care for the disabled.
The man, identified only by his surname Kim, ran Saekdongwon, a facility in the city of Incheon that houses roughly 33 residents and is fully subsidised by the state. He was convicted earlier this month on charges of raping two of the women and of committing a lesser act of sexual violence against a third. He has denied all allegations and has filed an appeal against the ruling.
The verdict, which came nearly two years after the abuse was first reported to police, has prompted renewed scrutiny of how authorities investigate crimes involving victims who cannot easily articulate what happened to them. Disability rights groups say the case lays bare a system that too often treats communication difficulties as a reason to dismiss testimony rather than as an obstacle the state is obliged to overcome.
At the centre of the case is a woman in her 40s, referred to in this article as Seo Mi-hyeon to protect her identity. She moved into Saekdongwon in 2016 and, according to her account, was raped by Kim shortly afterwards. She says he would come to her room at night or in the early hours of the morning. The abuse, she told investigators, continued for nearly a decade.
Seo has an intellectual disability and struggles to form long sentences, communicating mainly through short phrases and gestures. Yet when she finally spoke to police, her first words were stark: she said she had been hurting inside and had come to tell her story. Speaking through her lawyer, Ko Eun-young, she said there was no adult at the facility she felt she could turn to, and that she believed other staff members would not help her. The care home has not responded to that allegation.
The case only surfaced in February 2025, after Seo suffered a head wound. She says the injury occurred during one of Kim's attempts to assault her; she blocked him with her hands, and he threw a glass at her. Her lawyer told the court that the facility took Seo to hospital and only informed her mother after the wound had been stitched. When her mother asked to view CCTV footage to establish how her daughter had been hurt, the home refused, saying it was not authorised to release it.
Her mother then brought Seo home and decided to withdraw her from the facility. It was only after Seo was told she would not have to return that she disclosed the sexual abuse, and her mother reported it to police. Seo later explained that she had felt safe to speak precisely because she had been told she would not be going back. Asked how she had coped on her own for so many years, she said simply that she had endured it.
A police investigation into Seo's account was subsequently widened to other residents, and at least two more alleged victims emerged, including a woman referred to as Lee Mi-na, who also said Kim had raped her. Earlier this month, a judge found the testimony of all three women credible. Kim was sentenced to 15 years for the rapes of Lee and Seo, five years below the term prosecutors had sought.
For the third victim, the court convicted Kim of a lesser charge of sexual violence. The judge said the rape charge in her case was dropped because there was no conclusive evidence that force or threats had been used to render her unable to resist. A joint response committee made up of disability rights and civic groups criticised that reasoning, arguing that a victim's capacity to resist an assault should have no bearing on the verdict she receives.
The committee also took aim at the investigation itself, saying police failed to identify other potential victims. In November last year, after the initial allegations emerged, local authorities in Ganghwa County commissioned a team from Woosuk University to carry out an in-depth assessment of Saekdongwon's residents. That report, submitted to the court as evidence, found indications that at least 10 residents could have been sexually assaulted by Kim. The trial court did not address the finding.
According to local media reports, police struggled to establish the details of alleged abuse when interviewing residents, because most have severe disabilities and face significant difficulties communicating. Some residents reportedly gave answers unrelated to the questions, while others did not respond at all. Jeon Ji-su, the professor who led the Woosuk research team, told the BBC that investigators accepted only the accounts of people who could describe the abuse in complete sentences. Activists say that reliance on verbal testimony meant residents with greater communication difficulties were never recognised as victims.
The court also heard that some residents were made to call Kim "Dad", which prosecutors said illustrated the unequal power relationship between him and those in his care. The detail has become one of the most widely reported aspects of the case, reinforcing the impression of a man who exercised total control over people who had no realistic means of escape or complaint.
In the wake of the scandal, Saekdongwon has been asked to close down, though it continues to house some of its residents. The case has raised uncomfortable questions about oversight of state-subsidised facilities, the independence of internal reporting mechanisms, and whether the rights of disabled people are treated as an afterthought in South Korea's welfare system.
Kim has not responded to allegations that he may have abused more residents than the three named in the case, and he continues to deny wrongdoing. As his appeal proceeds, disability advocates say the real test will be whether authorities learn from the failures the trial exposed, and whether future investigations are designed to hear the testimony of people who cannot express themselves in the way the justice system expects.
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