Model Minority? Williams College Phi Beta Kappa Student from South Korea Yoonsan Bae '17 Convicted for 2014 Rape Attack

PITTSFIELD, MA - Judge Michael Callan convicted former Williams College student, Yoonsang Bae '17, of a single count of rape in regards to an on-campus incident in 2014. Bae, who was born in South Korea, reportedly was 22 at the time of the attack.

Ephblog appears to have the time line figured out. As they report, Bae arrived at Williams in the fall of 2011 as a member of the class of 2015. He spent his junior year (2013-2014) at Williams Oxford. The rape happened in July 2014. Bae was expelled for two years, which he spent in the Korean military. He returned and graduated in 2017. As far as I can tell, Bae's victim declined to immediately press charges. She waited until 2017 after Bae had returned and graduated from Williams College.

At the time, Bae was  and was reported to be 5' 9 and weighed 160. As a rugby player, he was a fullback, scrumhalf, and winger. The Williams College Rugby team is organized as a student club. It competes in the New England Rugby Football Union as part of the National Small College Rugby Organization. Yoonsang Bae was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 2017. Undoubtedly, his conviction will roil the campus with calls to investigate sports culture at Williams College while absolving Phi Beta Kappa of any influence on facilitating on-campus rape.

Bae, now 27, was sentenced on Monday, September 16, 2019. He received a sentence of three years in the Massachusetts state penitentiary. 

According to a report at Pittsfield.com, 

The victim, who was 19 at the time, testified that after attending an event with Bae, she returned to his room for a drink. She then got sick from the alcohol and Bae placed her in his bed where she passed out. When she awoke, Bae was raping her. He refused to stop despite her protests. The two were both Williams College students at the time.

She reported the rape to New York authorities, contacted the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, and underwent a sexual assault examination at a hospital in New York. Williams College investigated the incident and suspended Bae for two years. The Williamstown Police Department conducted a criminal investigation.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bae's crime is consistent with some of the most negative features of Korean culture, a legal structure which lessens the punishment for rape if the rapist is drunk.

In South Korea, Being Drunk Is a Legal Defense for Rape

Under South Korean law, a rape committed under the severe influence of alcohol is considered significantly less terrible than one committed while sober. If Mr. Bae had committed this rape in South Korea he might have been able to benefit from a legal system so biased against women and girls that rapists routinely plead for leniency because they committed their crimes while drunk. It is so bad that lighter sentences for violent rape are not uncommon in South Korea. Lawyers use drunkenness as a defense and South Korean courts take these arguments into account. 

While this practice is abhorrent in American law, appreciating the role of alcohol in crime is a legal principle that has long been a part of South Korea’s criminal law. 

In fact, the South Korean criminal code 10:2, Sim Sin Mi Yak, mandates a reduction in sentencing for people with mental impairment, according to the logic that a mentally impaired individual cannot be held entirely legally responsible for their actions because they do not possess an ability to “clearly distinguish objects, people, and surroundings with lucid discretionary judgments to determine their actions.”

One of the pillars of South Korean law — Joo Chi Gam Hyung — falls under this criminal code. It assumes that substance abuse impairs a person’s mental state. And because Sim Sin Mi Yak dictates that the person’s impairment must be weighed in sentencing, a person so drunk at the moment of a crime that their faculties are diminished must receive a lesser sentence.

Yoonsang Bae '17 comes from a culture in which there is less punishment for a rapist as long as he is drunk. At the trial, Bae did mention his drunkenness at the time of the attack:

Bae said he had provided alcohol to the victim in the form of cocktails consisting of beer, tequila and triple sec. He said the woman got drunk to the point of becoming ill several times, and he helped her back and forth to the bathroom.

Bae testified that he brought the victim to the common room where she originally was expected to sleep for the night, but it appeared that there were someone else's belongings there and he decided to bring her back to his room instead.

Under cross-examination, Bae acknowledged that while he saw someone else's luggage in the room, there didn't appear to be anyone sleeping in the bed that had been designated for the woman's visit.

He said he also was drunk at the time and wasn't aware with whom he was having sex; he presumed that it was his girlfriend. And he testified that he apologized to the woman several times the next day.

It would be interesting to tease out the extent to which his willingness to turn down an extremely generous plea deal was due to a cultural expectation that he might be sentenced less harshly because he was drunk at the time of the rape. As you may recall, Bae was indicted on a single count of rape on August 9, 2017. American prosecutors offered him an opportunity to plead to the lesser charge of indecent assault and battery and that the case would have been continued without a finding of guilt. Bae rejected the plea agreement and chose instead to go to trial.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.