South Korean court orders arrest and expulsion of Brazilian woman for stalking BTS star By Luís Henrique Costa
3 min read
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The South Korean judicial system ordered the imprisonment of a woman born in Brazil for a period of one year, plus two years under conditional observation, due to crimes of obsessive harassment and domestic violation. The penalty stems from a series of continuous attacks directed at the artist Jung Kook, one of the members of the famous musical group BTS.
Invasion of privacy and siege of the artist’s residence
The admirer’s extreme behavior gained momentum in December last year, accumulating a series of serious infractions in Yongsan-gu district. Actions recorded by security authorities include:
- Ringing the property’s doorbell 133 consecutive times during the early hours of December 12th.
- Unauthorized access to the house’s grounds the following day, taking advantage of a delivery employee’s entry through a side door.
- Constant patrols around the perimeter of the house on 22 separate occasions over the course of thirty days.
- Throwing items and introducing cards through spaces in the main gate in an attempt to make forced contact.
Upset by the sequence of disturbances, Jung Kook formalized a complaint to the authorities, which resulted in the pursuer’s initial arrest. Released the following day, she was officially notified by the Seoul police not to approach the address. The Brazilian citizen, however, disregarded the direct order and returned to the area, ringing the doorbell and posting new messages. To stop the insistence, security agents applied an emergency restriction order on December 28, establishing a mandatory minimum distance of 100 meters between her and the property.
Disobedience to court orders and new arrest
Despite the legal barriers established, the woman continued her harassment routine on January 4th of this year, abandoning photographs and various printed papers around Jung Kook’s house. This act of recidivism provoked an immediate second arrest, sending the suspect directly to the dock on formal charges of continuous stalking and illegal entry into private property.
During the reading of the sentence, the magistrate responsible for the case emphasized that the accused continued to commit the crimes even after receiving clear instructions from the security forces, completely ignoring the distancing orders. The K-pop star demanded that the courts impose a strict sanction. To support the decision, the court assessed the rigor of the country’s new anti-stalking legislation, approved in 2021 precisely to protect public figures and ordinary citizens from systematic persecution. As mitigating factors for not applying the maximum penalty, the court considered that the singer did not hear the doorbell during the night attacks, that the intruder did not penetrate the interior of the residence and that the failure to comply with the emergency measure had an impact considered mild.
Expulsion from the Asian country and mental health history
Along with the custodial sentence, the verdict stipulated the compulsory removal of the Brazilian woman from South Korean territory. The judge explained that, as the defendant had already spent around three months in pre-trial detention and would be deported as soon as her sentence was completed, the likelihood of her harassing the BTS member again would drop drastically, guaranteeing the musician’s safety.
At the beginning of the year, family members of the 30-year-old woman went public to explain that she suffers from severe psychiatric problems. Relatives reported that the young woman left the state of Paraíba for São Paulo in search of professional opportunities and, despite the family’s insistence that she maintain therapeutic support, she refused. The news that she had left for South Korea reached her family via the internet, generating immediate panic, as they knew that she was experiencing an episode of delirium, faithfully believing that Jung Kook was her destined romantic partner.
A person close to the family detailed that a psychological crisis of similar proportions had already occurred in 2021, when the young woman underwent a psychiatric evaluation and received the report confirming the mental disorder. Since the arrest in Asia, the family’s routine has been reduced to daily attempts at communication, with the mother constantly begging her daughter to agree to return to Brazil, a request that continues to be denied by the accused.
