Two recent cases — actress Nana’s armed home intruder and a woman who punched a bathroom voyeur — have reignited debate about South Korea’s narrow self-defense standard and whether victims are being treated as perpetrators. Here are the key points.

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The Legal Framework

Under Article 21 of the Korean Criminal Act, self-defense requires three conditions to be met simultaneously: the threat must be current and ongoing, the threat must be legally unjustified, and the defensive response must be proportionate — the minimum force reasonably necessary to repel the threat. It is this third element, known as the “reasonableness” (상당성) requirement, that most often turns victims into defendants.

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Case 1: Nana — Self-Defense Recognized

– An armed intruder broke into actress Nana’s home at night, choked her and her mother, and demanded money. In the struggle to subdue him, Nana wielded a weapon and the intruder suffered a 5cm cut. He subsequently counter-sued Nana for attempted murder and aggravated injury.
– After police investigation, Nana was cleared with a finding of no criminal liability. The court in the intruder’s own robbery trial confirmed that Nana’s response — using a weapon to protect herself and her mother from an armed attacker — was a proportionate act of self-defense.
– The court found Nana reasonably believed the intruder could harm her mother, and that her response fell within the bounds of necessary defensive force.

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Case 2: Bathroom Voyeur — Excessive Force Finding

– A was using a public women’s restroom in Changwon when she caught B in the act of filming her without consent. B, who was already serving a suspended sentence for a prior voyeurism conviction, admitted the offense and apologized.
– A then punched B in the face 15 to 17 times. She argued this was self-defense or a lawful citizen’s arrest to prevent his escape.
– The court convicted A and fined her ₩300,000, finding that while blocking B’s exit was justified, repeatedly punching him in the face after he had admitted the offense and apologized went beyond what was necessary. The ongoing threat had effectively ended at the point of admission, making continued physical force disproportionate.

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Why the Outcomes Differ

The key distinction is whether the threat was still active at the moment of defensive force. In Nana’s case, the armed intruder was in the home, physically threatening two people, and the danger was immediate and ongoing. In A’s case, the voyeurism had already occurred and the perpetrator had admitted and apologized — meaning the threat was treated as having substantially concluded before the repeated punching began.

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The Broader Debate and Legislative Response

The two cases together have prompted strong public reaction and renewed calls for reform. Critics argue that Korea’s proportionality standard is too abstract and too difficult for victims to predict in real time, and that the burden in practice falls on victims to prove they did not use excessive force.

Two legislative proposals are now in play. A bill known informally as the “Nana Act,” introduced by Democratic Party lawmaker Jeon Yong-gi, would establish a presumption of valid self-defense in specified serious threat scenarios — armed attacks, home invasions targeting family members, and situations involving imminent threat to life or body. A separate bill by People Power Party lawmaker Cho Gyeong-tae would expand the time window for self-defense by changing “current” threat to “current or imminent future” threat — which advocates say would better protect victims of digital crimes like voyeurism, where the danger of distribution persists even after the act of filming ends.

Legal experts have cautioned that while greater predictability is desirable, rigidly codifying the proportionality standard risks sacrificing the case-by-case flexibility that allows courts to do justice in unusual situations. They have suggested that a more workable reform might involve shifting the burden of proof — presuming self-defense in defined circumstances and requiring the prosecution to disprove it, rather than requiring the victim to affirmatively establish every element.

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Why This Matters

For practitioners and policymakers, these two cases crystallize the tension at the heart of Korean self-defense law: a framework that in principle protects victims but in practice can punish them for fighting back with too much force. The legislative momentum now underway — driven in part by public sympathy for both Nana and A — may produce the most significant reform to self-defense law in a generation.

Article: https://www.mt.co.kr/society/2026/06/25/2026062413283524259