What is a court deposit in a Korean sex crime case?

What Korean law says

Article 5-2(1): where the accused in a criminal case cannot know the victim’s personal details under the applicable laws, a deposit in performance made for that victim, called a criminal deposit, may be made at the deposit office located where the court hearing the case sits.

Article 5-2(2): in place of the recipient’s personal details, the deposit statement may record the court and the case number, the case name, and a description identifying the victim as it appears in the record, the statement, the indictment and similar documents, and may state the ground for the deposit by specifying when the harm occurred and the nature of the obligation.

Article 5-2(3): notice to the recipient may be replaced by the deposit officer publishing the prescribed particulars on a website. Article 5-2(4) provides that identity for collection is confirmed by a certificate issued by the court or the prosecution.

Deposit Act, Article 5-2. Act No. 21453, in force from 17 March 2026.

What Korean courts have actually done

Three recent decisions show the range. In a Busan District Court judgment of 24 April 2025 (2024GoDan2469) a deposit of 2,000,000 KRW was made after argument had closed and the victim’s intention to accept it was never confirmed; the court said it could take the deposit into account only to a limited extent and imposed four months’ imprisonment. In a Seoul Western District Court appeal of 25 September 2025 (2024No1446) a deposit of 7,000,000 KRW was refused by the victim, and the court still gave it limited weight, reducing a fine from 7,000,000 to 4,000,000 KRW. In an Incheon District Court appeal of 7 March 2025 (2024No4514) a deposit of 2,000,000 KRW had not prevented an immediate custodial sentence at first instance; the sentence was suspended on appeal only once an actual settlement and a statement of no desire for punishment were obtained.

Read together, the pattern is consistent: a deposit is treated as mitigation of limited weight, timing matters, and it is not a substitute for agreement with the victim.

What usually happens in practice

The provision exists because victim details are withheld in these cases, which used to leave an accused with no lawful way to pay anything at all. It solves that problem. It does not solve the underlying one, which is that what moves a sentence most is an agreement, not a transfer.

Timing is the controllable variable. A deposit made late, and particularly after argument has closed, reads as positioning. The same sum earlier reads differently.

What you should do next

• Do not treat a deposit as a settlement. They are weighed differently.
• If you are going to deposit, do it early rather than on the eve of judgment.
• Get the amount right against the actual harm rather than choosing a round number.
• Keep pursuing settlement through a lawyer in parallel. That is what changed the outcome in the appeal above.

Written and reviewed by Soobin You, Attorney at YUSU Lawfirm. Former prosecutor. Last legal review: 12 September 2026.