Shinhwa’s Minwoo talks being scammed, but it’s revealed it was for bribery attempt in his sexual assault case

Talk about a weird case, it was recently reported that Shinhwa member Minwoo had been scammed out of millions, and he had made multiple television appearances somberly discussing that experience. However, it was also revealed the scam was about Minwoo attempting to bribe prosecutors to drop his sexual assault case from back in 2019.

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Over a month ago, it was revealed that a “former” idol had filed a lawsuit against a TV screenwriter for scamming him out of 2.6 billion won, and that the writer had been sentenced to nine years in prison and been ordered to pay back the 2.6 billion won in restitution.

The catch was the scam in question involved the writer telling the idol that he had connections with the prosecution and could help him get out of his “sexual harassment” case, which led to the idol handing the money over for a bribe.

‘B’ allegedly convinced the idol they knew the prosecutors in the trial and would bribe them on the idol’s behalf. After the idol gave ‘B’ the money in question, ‘B’ then kept the money for himself. Court documents reveal ‘B’ did not know the prosecutors at all, and the idol was found innocent of the sexual harassment claims without the help of ‘B’. Afterwards, ‘B’ claimed the prosecutors planned to appeal and fight the innocent judgement, and the idol took out a loan against his home to give money to ‘B’. 

That led netizens to speculate it was Minwoo because he had recently opened up about being scammed on a variety show, and indeed a report confirmed it was him. Less than a week ago he mentioned being scammed out of that amount on Mr. House Husband, which is basically confirmation from himself.

That was an …. interesting choice by him, because trying to garner sympathy understandably hasn’t worked so far due to the fact that to his knowledge he was attempting to bribe a prosecutor when he got scammed.

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So there’s the attempted bribery aspect of it, but this popping back up also got me to backtrack to the circumstances around his “sexual harassment” case being dropped.

Back in July of 2019, he was accused of “sexual harassment” by two women, including kissing by force (hence the quotation marks since it’s sexual assault, really). One of the women told police he grabbed both of her cheeks to kiss her and also touched “certain parts” of her body.

Later, they both withdrew their complaints against him like his company said they would, but police said they would continue investigating. Eventually, the case was forwarded to prosecution because police said they had found CCTV evidence of the incident.

Police explained that they would continue investigating the case because an indecent act by compulsion is indictable without a complaint. They recently found CCTV footage that confirm the suspicions of indecent act by compulsion.

Five months later, seemingly out of nowhere, his company released a short statement that he had been cleared … and that was that.

Regarding the incident related to our singer Lee Min Woo that was reported through the media in July, the prosecution recently closed the investigation with the conclusion that no suspicions were found.

That’s it.

Even at the time it was bewildering and there were comments on the site speculating about what happened. Now that we know he tried to use millions to bribe prosecutors into dropping the case, it seems even weirder, right? Is it even a conspiracy at this point to at least want more of an explanation or be suspicious of the circumstances in which he was cleared? Out of all the things that media hound celebrities for, it’s crazy to get a pass on this without further scrutiny.