Petition for the ‘Kim Soo-hyun Prevention Act’ hits signature threshold, legal action likely | Hollywood News

The controversy surrounding actors Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Sae-ron has just taken an interesting turn, one which will benefit the former of the two. Soo-hyun was accused of being in a relationship with the late Sae-ron, who was a minor at the time. Due to a loophole in the statutory rape laws of South Korea, which only protect minors from the ages of 13 to 16, Kim Soo-hyun cannot be charged due to a technicality. Soo-hyun, however, has denied that he dated the actress when she was a minor.
In order to prevent this from happening in the future, a petition demanding legal reforms was curated, which demanded that all minors under the age of 19 should be protected the legal system against sexual crimes. The reason behind the name of the proposed law was led in the petition and read, “A paedophile who seduced and deceived a promising female actress from childhood until her death has evaded the law… We here petition to revise the statutory rape law under the name of the ‘Kim Soo Hyun Prevention Act’”.
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Submitted on April 5, the signature threshold was kept at 50000, and the petition collected 86% of the required signatures in just three days. As it has now crossed the decided threshold with 51,083 signatures, it is legible for committee-level consideration, and they will have 90 days to decide whether the proposed law goes forward for a full discussion.
Soo-hyun and his family have maintained his not-guilty stance while mountains of evidence, such as pictures, letters and screenshots of conversations between him and the deceased actor have surfaced. Duringa  press conference, he unequivocally denied the fact, “I’ll address the biggest concern—I did not date the deceased when she was a minor. We dated five years ago for about a year, long before Queen of Tears aired.”
Several brands and shows have already cut ties with the My Love For The Star actor. The petition has demanded two crucial changes in the law; the first is to raise the statutory rape protection age, and the second is to change increasing punishment for statutory rape.
While this law would be a massive upgrade in the legal system and its agency to protect the minors of the country, many experts believe that Kim Soo-hyun would most likely not be convicted and would walk free.