“Squid Game” actor O Yeong-su will stand trial in February on indecent assault charges.
The award-winning screen veteran, 78, was indicted late in November, on an allegation of sexual misconduct in Korea after he allegedly touched a woman inappropriately.
She filed a complaint against him in December last year, but the case was closed in April, with no charges filed against Yeong-su, according to Yonhap news agency.
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But the prosecutor’s office in Suwon reopened it and investigated the allegations, which Yeong-su has always denied.
The trial of the Golden Globe winner has now been set for February, at the district court in the South Korean city of Seongnam, it emerged on Thursday.
Specific details about the case could not be confirmed at this stage, Kim Myeong-un, an official in the district prosecutors’ office said according to “Sky News”.
Best known for his role as Oh Il-name in Netflix’s “Squid Game”, Yeong-su was released without detention after initially being accused of inappropriately touching a woman’s body in 2017.
The actor last year told the local Yonhap media agency he had “held hands” with the woman “to show the way around a lake”.
He apologised to the alleged victim, but insisted he had done so because the woman claimed she “wouldn’t make a fuss about it”.
Yeong-su also said an apology “doesn’t mean that I admit the charges”.
He won South Korea’s first Golden Globe award in January, for his role in “Squid Game”, which saw poverty-hit contestants play childhood games with fatal consequences in a bid to win 45.6 billion won.
He is seen as one of the greatest stage actors in South Korea, appearing in more than 200 stage productions since 1963 and winning a string of major awards.
The dystopian “Squid Game” became Netflix’s most popular series launch ever, drawing 111 million fans in less than four weeks after debuting last year.
It is still one of the most popular shows on the platform and is returning for a second series.
