An appellate court has upheld prison terms for six people in their 20s who confined a coworker for four days, beat her in a group and subjected her to acts of cruelty because they believed she had spoken ill of one of them. One of the defendants committed the crime while serving a suspended sentence for an earlier offense.
The Suwon High Court's first criminal division, presided over by Senior Judge Shin Hyun-il, sentenced two of the six, including the ringleader identified as A, to one year and six months in prison, the same terms handed down by the lower court, legal sources said on the 8th. The six were indicted on charges of aggravated confinement resulting in injury.
Sentences for the other four were partly reduced. Two of them received one year and six months in prison, suspended for two years, after the court took into account that they had reached a settlement with the victim. The appeals of the remaining two were dismissed, leaving intact the suspended prison terms imposed at the first trial.
The defendants were indicted on charges of confining and collectively assaulting a woman in her 20s, identified as B, a colleague at a logistics center, from Oct. 15 to Oct. 19 last year at A's home in Gwonseon District, Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, and at a nearby park.
The crime began after A was told that B had been speaking ill of him.
The group took B's mobile phone to prevent her from calling police, according to the investigation. They then cut her hair with electric clippers and struck her arms and other parts of her body repeatedly with a blunt object.
The abuse did not stop there. Investigators found that the group forced B to consume hot green chili peppers and soju until she vomited, and burned the palms of her hands with lit cigarettes.
B suffered serious injuries requiring eight weeks of recovery, including a broken bone in her right arm, from the group assault that continued for four days.
The appellate court left A's sentence unchanged, noting that he had committed the crime while on a suspended prison sentence for indecent assault by force and assault.
"Considering that the defendants have not been forgiven by the victim even at the appellate stage, it is difficult to conclude that the lower court's sentencing fell outside a reasonable range," the court said.
