Conviction Buddhist institutions and contexts Buddhist institutions and lineages Seoul, South Korea · 2025

South Korea: Jin-Gak Order and official convicted after retaliation against a monk's accuser

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

senior monk within a Buddhist order, the religious order as employer and institution

Organization

Jin-Gak Order

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The victim was a member of the order subject to the senior monk's hierarchical religious authority; when she reported, the order itself used its institutional power to reassign her — the finding the court penalised.

Institutional obedience or isolation
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2025-01-01 · conviction and damages award

Seoul court, South Korea. A Seoul court convicted the Jin-Gak Order and its HR official of violating sexual-violence-prevention and whistleblower-protection law after a senior monk repeatedly touched a 25-year-old order member without consent. The monk received a suspended ten-month term, and the victim was awarded 309.5 million won in damages for retaliatory reassignment.

Documented coercion mechanisms

hierarchical seniority within the order
retaliatory reassignment of the person who reported

Cited record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and damages report 'Whistleblower wins compensation in #MeToo case against senior Buddhist monk', The Korea Herald (2025).: Reports the convictions of the order and its HR official and the damages awarded for retaliation against the person who reported.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10512973 Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: verdict-and-damages-report. SHA-256 01691ac610c1955081150cfc13aa85e6cc731e4e0daaf685fe76baa943b0f3d2
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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