Kim Soo Hyun prevention act gains 40K signatures calling for age of consent to be raised to 19 amid Kim Sae Ron dating row

The controversy surrounding Kim Soo Hyun’s alleged relationship with minor Kim Sae Ron in 2015 refuses to die down. The scandal, which first ignited in South Korea, has now unfold past its borders, fueling public outrage and real debates.

In response, a proper petition used to be launched on March 31 through the National Meeting Electronic Petition Design, demanding stricter real measures against statutory rape. The petition, dubbed the “Kim Soo Hyun Prevention Act,” requires elevating the age of consent to 19 and imposing harsher punishments for offenders. As of April 4, 2025, the petition has already gathered 42,939 signatures, covering 86 per cent of the required 50,000 votes in only three days. If it secures the final 10,000 signatures at some level of the next 26 days (by the tip of April), the proposal will doubtless be formally reviewed by parliamentary committees.

Currently, South Korea’s statutory rape regulations offer protection to minors most efficient between the ages of 13 and 16, leaving those used 16 and above without real safeguards against predatory relationships. The petition argues that this loophole enabled Kim Soo Hyun’s alleged relationship with Kim Sae Ron, who used to be a high college student on the time. It advocates for expanding safety to duvet minors used 16 to 19 to forestall identical incidents in the future.

Past elevating the age of consent, the petition also requires harsher penalties for statutory r*pe. Currently, the law mandates a minimal sentence of two years in penal complicated for convicted offenders. On the choice hand, the proposed reform seeks to lengthen the minimal sentence to 5 years, guaranteeing stricter real penalties for such crimes.

With overwhelming public strengthen, the Kim Soo Hyun Prevention Act would possibly well perchance trace a massive shift in South Korea’s real framework for safeguarding minors from s*xual exploitation. Whether or now no longer the petition will pass the next legislative hurdle stays to be considered, nonetheless one factor is certain—this debate is removed from over.

The petition quotes, “Even though South Korean law clearly defines minors as those below 18 years of age and protects them, the age limit for statutory r*pe, which most efficient protects minors between the ages of 13 and 16, has allowed a pedophile who seduced and deceived a promising female actress from childhood till her demise to evade the law. Therefore, in present to forestall a recurrence of something fancy this, we hereby petition to revise the statutory rape of a minor below the title of the ‘OOO Prevention Act.”