Editor’s note: The following article includes detailed claims of rape and sexual harassment.

Two women are accusing Jang Jin-sung, a prominent North Korean defector and best-selling author who wrote propaganda for the DPRK government, of several counts of rape and sexual coercion over the course of several years.

Each of the women who spoke with NK News say that Jang raped them at least once, putting in motion a complicated relationship of sexual encounters that allegedly made them fear they could be harmed or suffer damage to their reputation if they refused Jang’s sexual advances.

The two individuals — South Korean journalist Haeryun Kang and a North Korean defector named Seung Sol-hyang — cited Jang’s fame as a high-profile defector who worked for the North Korean government and his power as factors that they say made them fear getting on his bad side. NK News has also interviewed 18 people not directly involved in the allegations detailed in this report and found that five individuals, who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions, corroborated that Kang or Seung told them about Jang’s alleged sexual misconduct before the allegations appeared in the media. 

When reached for comment, Jang told NK News he denies all allegations of rape, and has described his sexual encounters with Kang as consensual. He also denied ever having a sexual relationship with Seung. 

KANG’S ALLEGATIONS

Haeryun Kang, a 32-year-old journalist and creative director at incubator MediaOri, told NK News that Jang raped her “within just two to three months” of her starting a paid job at his media company, New Focus International, as an English editor and translator. She said that the two had sexual intercourse five more times between Nov. 2014 and early 2015, when she changed her cell phone number.

“This was my boss who was always in my face in a tiny company. I didn’t know how to draw that line,” Kang told NK News. “I didn’t realize the danger I was in physically until how quickly [it] happened … The first time was definitely rape.”

Kang, who was 26 at the time of the alleged rape, said she remembers being awestruck by Jang as she interpreted for him at interviews with “big name journalists” that she “aspired to be.” She said she also first thought of Jang as a best-selling author that she admired — someone she had “immense respect for.”

According to her retelling of events, Jang started to call her late at night to have personal conversations that were largely unrelated to work. At one point, Jang invited Kang to a weekend trip to Japan, purportedly to translate as well as “hang out.” Kang rebuffed the trip proposal, but said she was “physically harassed” by Jang for the first time when she was drinking with him and another female New Focus International colleague in her apartment in Bundang on Nov. 17, 2014. The two decided to invite Jang over, and later that night, Jang allegedly grabbed Kang by the legs with both of his hands in a seeming attempt to pull her onto the floor after her colleague had fallen asleep in another room.

“I said, ‘No, stop, stop,’ and he tried to grab me again. And I just stood up and I think I did the dishes or something — or I closed the door — but he fell asleep,” Kang said. 

When reached by NK News, Jang recounted going to Kang’s home in Bundang at some point and the New Focus International colleague being present.

“It was just a normal relationship between lovers. We had good feelings [about each other] from the start,” he said. 

Sanjay Adhia, a forensic psychiatrist in the United States who specializes in sexual assault, said that a workplace superior making an unwanted sexual advance on an employee is “definitely sexual harassment” by U.S. standards. He added that sexual harassment in the United States “can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors or other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.”

South Korean law defines sexual harassment as any case where an employer or employee makes the other party “feel sexual humiliation or aversion with verbal or physical behavior of a sexual nature.” The definition also includes an expression of intent to “disadvantage” a party if they don’t comply with “any verbal or physical behavior of a sexual nature.”

Kang claims that she left Jang in her apartment after that night and went to work early in the morning on Nov. 18, 2014. Later that day, Jang allegedly told her that he gave all other employees the day off but needed Kang to attend a work-related lunch meeting at the Koreana Hotel in Seoul. Kang said that, after the lunch meeting, she told Jang she was tired and had to meet a friend later, and that Jang then offered to let her sleep in his “friend’s apartment” in the Gyeongbokgung area. Kang said that the apartment — Gwanghwamun Pungrim Space Bon — belonged to Jang’s friend, Jeon Jae-hyun, who works as the acting head of an educational corporation that runs a culinary school called Komyung Food Service High School. 

Seung Sol-hyang, the North Korean defector who said she was raped by Jang, has also accused Jeon of quasi-rape.

“[Jang] said, ‘Why don’t you take a nap there? That apartment is basically free to sleep there, and then go meet your friend,’” Kang recalled. “So naively, stupidly — and this was something that I blamed myself for years afterward — but I just said, ‘sure,’ and I went to sleep.” 

According to Kang, Jang climbed on top of her while she was trying to sleep at Jeon’s apartment that day and raped her. 

“My thought process in that split second was, ‘I’ll just do this. If I resist, it’s not like I can physically fight him off. This is a space where I can’t fight him,’” she said. “The first time was definitely rape.”

Immediately after this article was published, Kang contacted NK News to add that she “explicitly told him to stop and tried to push him off, before giving up.”

However, Jang said that he had consensual sex with Kang in Jeon’s Gyeongbokgung-area apartment, but that it was likely on Jan. 4 or Jan. 5, 2015. 

After the first alleged rape incident, Kang recounted going to work the next day, on Nov. 19, 2014, and meeting Jang at a motel near the office at his request. She said she told Jang that he had to choose between having her “for sex” and “for work,” at the time thinking that it was the best option she had. 

“I was really confused about the whole thing, and I thought that was the best course of action,” Kang told NK News. “He said, ‘OK, I want to work with you, but let me give you one last hug.’ And then that was how we had our second intercourse.”

The next day, Kang said she went to the New Focus International office around 6 a.m., packed up her things and left a note to a reporter on staff stating that she’s leaving but cannot disclose why. She said she also left Jang a bouquet of flowers because she “thought this was the polite way to say goodbye to someone who had hired [her]” and because she was “scared about how to end this relationship well.”

Kang said she also remembers blocking Jang’s number, but picking up a call from him days later.

“I felt completely alone. I was confused. I didn’t know who to talk to, and ironically, the person that knew this situation was Jang,” she said. 

According to Kang, she and Jang then had sex four more times in various motels in Dongnimmun, Gangnam, Bundang and Yongin until she finally changed her number in Jan. or Feb. 2015. 

NK News was told by two other individuals that Kang confided in them about the first alleged rape between 2014 and 2016, and another individual said that Kang spoke of a “strange” sexual relationship with Jang.

“[Jang] probably doesn’t realize how hard I was trying to draw the boundaries,” Kang said. “Yes, I was attracted to him because I thought he was like this big deal … And if someone like that shows interest in you, yeah, I feel flattered and like a part of me wants to reciprocate.”

Christopher Krebs, a chief scientist at U.S.-based research institute RTI International who focuses on sexual assault, said that ”a lot of times survivors later in life recognize that what happened was victimization or was a crime.” He also said that “the consensual nature of one [sexual] act has nothing to do with the nonconsensual, unwanted, criminal sexual act that maybe occurred [before or] after.”

South Korean law defines rape as sexual intercourse with another person by means of violence or intimidation.

According to Krebs, rape survivors and perpetrators often know each other, are friends or are dating.

“These issues of ‘Well, why were you around the person and why did you let them do X, Y and Z but not B?’ are almost never part of the conversation when you talk about almost every other crime,” he said. “If the perpetrator is still pursuing them in terms of a relationship or sexually, they almost don’t necessarily know how to frame what happened to them as something they should really work hard to try to avoid.”

In Kang’s view, her mixed feelings for Jang and her subsequent sexual encounters with him do not negate that she was raped.

“I had no concept of choice anymore,” she said. “It’s not my job to set those boundaries at the workplace. He’s the editor-in-chief who hired me … I had no experience and this was a field I was going into, and the world he represented seemed so terrifyingly big.”

SEUNG’S ALLEGATIONS

Seung Sol-hyang, a 32-year-old defector who said she originally left North Korea in 2006, told NK News that Jang raped her four times starting in July 2016. She also said that Jeon Jae-hyun, Jang’s friend and the acting head of Gomyeong Foundation, “quasi-raped” her.

Quasi-rape is a term in South Korean law defined as sexually assaulting someone incapable of resistance.

Seung first publicly shared these allegations during an interview with South Korean broadcaster MBC on Jan. 24, 2021, and has since filed a criminal complaint against both Jang and Jeon. Kang and Seung told NK News that they did not know each other and first got in touch after the MBC interview aired. 

Seung told NK News that she first encountered Jang when she was a 27-year-old student at Konkuk University in June 2016. Jang allegedly sent her a Facebook message requesting to interview her for New Focus International. Seung then met him and Jeon at Komyung Food Service High School before going out to eat and drink at a restaurant, where she got drunk to the point of not being able to “control” her body, she said. She recalled Jeon offering to give her a ride home and being surprised when he took her to his apartment instead.

“I remember passing out in the living room. Then, when I woke up in the morning, my clothes were all off,” she told NK News. “There was also a man [Jeon] next to me.” 

She added: “I kept my mouth shut because I was embarrassed, and I was thinking about what I should do … and then Jeon contacted me saying, ‘Did you get home okay?’ in a sweet way as if he’s my lover, and he continued to convince me to see him again.”

Jeon told NK News that he denies the allegation of quasi-rape, arguing that Seung was not heavily intoxicated upon entering his apartment with him and describing their one-month sexual and dating relationship as “consensual.” 

According to Seung, Jang called her to the New Focus International office three days after she broke up with Jeon. She recounted that Jang said he needed something for a New Focus International interview, but insisted that they move their meeting to a hotel because he wanted to be away from security cameras to talk. 

In the hotel, Jang allegedly grabbed Seung by her hair and forced her to sit down. Jang then blackmailed her with a photo of her naked body taken during the rape incident with Jeon and proceeded to rape her, she said. When reached by NK News, Jeon denied that he took this photo.

“He showed me that and said, ‘If you leave, I’ll tell people about all this … He said he’s going to upload it to the Konkuk University business major website,” Seung said. “I couldn’t think of resisting or rebelling.”

Seung claims that Jang raped her for a second time after telling her to come to Jeon’s apartment, a third time in his own apartment in Gyeonggi province and a fourth time in his vacation home in Goseong, Gangwon province — all between July and Aug. 2016. 

“I couldn’t just say I don’t want to. These people are too powerful,” she said. “I just gave up from the third time.”

However, Jang told NK News that he never had sex with Seung and that he never possessed a photo of her naked body. He also said that he did not have a vacation home and that he has travel records showing that he was not in South Korea at the time. Jang declined to show these records to NK News, or provide phone and messaging records with Seung and Kang that he said would contradict the allegations. 

John Kim, an attorney at MAST Law & Consulting who is representing Seung in a criminal suit against Jang and Jeon, told NK News that a third woman has approached him with sexual assault allegations against Jang, but does not want to be identified at this time.

Kang, who described the 2016 #MeToo movement as a turning point for her, recounted being a 26-year-old in “a perpetual state of darkness” after the incident. 

“I got a glimpse into how powerful his network was, and that was really scary,” she said. “It was a world that I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to get on his bad side.”

Edited by Nils Weisensee. If you have further information related to this report, please contact reporters Kelly Kasulis,  Jeongmin Kim or Won-gi Jung.

Update (Feb. 16, 2021 5:33 p.m. KST): This article has been updated to include a significant new detail about Kang Haeryun’s account of the alleged rape by Jang Jin-sung.