Squid Game actor O Yeong-su has been charged with sexual misconduct, South Korea’s prosecutor said.
The 78-year-old became the first South Korean to win a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor in a series in January for his role as a seemingly frail old man in the megahit Netflix dystopian thriller.
According to local reports, South Korean prosecutors charged him without custody on Thursday for allegedly inappropriately touching a woman’s body in 2017.
He denies the allegations, local media report.
Everything reported by the local media about O “is not factually incorrect,” a Suwon district prosecutor’s office official told AFP, without giving further details.
Following the news, local reports said Seoul’s Ministry of Culture decided to stop airing a government commercial – about the regulatory innovation – featuring O.
Squid Game, which depicts a macabre world where marginalized people go head-to-head in traditional kids’ games turned deadly, became Netflix’s most popular series launch, drawing an audience of 111 million in less than four weeks after its 2021 debut.
It is still one of the most popular shows on the platform.
The show’s success has cemented South Korea’s ever-growing influence on global popular culture, following global acclaim from the likes of K-pop band BTS and the Oscar-winning film Parasite.