How a cold sexual assault case cost a young South Korean police officer her life

Thousands of South Koreans have signed a petition demanding a new investigation into the death of a young aspiring police officer after police dropped the case, triggering public outrage.

Tens of thousands of South Koreans have signed a petition calling for the investigation to be reopened after a 19-year-old woman committed suicide in late February following South Korean police’s decision to archive your case sexual assault.

At the time of this publication, published on the website of the country’s National Assembly since April 16 and to which ZAP had access, had gathered 82,109 signaturesexceeding the threshold of 50,000 signatures that requires parliament to formally analyze it.

According to , the case focuses on a young woman who presented in December 2025 a criminal complaint against your employerowner of a bar in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province.

The young South Korean woman, who accuses the bar owner, a man in his 40s, of violation by taking advantage of a state of unconsciousnesstold the police that he had drunk too much, lost consciousness and that, when he regained consciousness, came across the man on top of him, involved in sexual acts.

The police, however, accepted the owner’s version that the act would have been consensual and decided not to forward the case to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, invoking video surveillance images that showed both smiling and talking before and after of the meeting.

Days after being informed of the decision, the young woman, who aspired to become police officerrushed from a tall building on February 21, dying. He left a message asking for a challenge to the decision police officer, saved on your cell phone, be presented in your name.

In the petition, the family notes that the investigation into the controversial case was based on a single round of interrogationsboth to the victim and the suspect, in video surveillance footage selectively provided by the suspect and in testimonies from a reduced number of witnesses.

“We can barely conceive what she will have felt — unable to tell his parents what had happened to him, unable to even break down into sobs, determined to die and yet, until a few hours before his death, hiding everything without showing any sign of suffering to the family,” says the petition.

At the time your statement was taken, your alcohol level was from 0.085%, above the 0.08% threshold from which the driving license can be revoked in cases of driving under the influence of alcohol.

The family says the investigation was closed without any medical evaluation or expert on what did such a level of intoxication mean to your ability to resist or give consent.

On April 12, activists filed a complaint with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, accusing case investigators at the Ansan Danwon police station of offenses that include distortion of the law.