K-pop boy group VIXX's member RAVI has been sentenced to two years in prison, and announced to leave the group.
On April 11, RAVI's first trial took place at the Seoul Southern District Court in Yangcheon-gu, Seoul.
In his first trial, RAVI has been sentenced to two years in prison on charges of violating the Military Service Act.
RAVI was accused of altering his military service with false medical reports with the help of 'Koo', a military service broker who was arrested last year.
Back in 2021, RAVI received a 'script' from 'Koo' that told him to act as if he had fainted due to epilepsy, and call an ambulance.
Even though his test results at the hospital showed nothing wrong, RAVI continued to act like he had epilepsy, and demanded the doctor to write him a note.
As part of the 'script', he threatened the doctor if he/she was going to be responsible for his career.
Later, he managed to submit a diagnosis of suspected epilepsy to the Military Manpower Administration, and successfully lowered his physical grades.
Following the trial, RAVI issued an apology on his Instagram; he started off by saying, "First of all, I would like to apologize to everyone who were hurt and affected by my wrongdoings."
RAVI explained why he came to make a wrong choice, "Due to some medical issues that I had for a long time, I was to serve my national mandatory duty as a social service worker. But since there were certain things that I had to get done before I began my service, I had to postpone my service."
He continued, "I came to a point where it was difficult for me to delay my service any longer. At that time, I was the only profit-generating artist in the company, and there were lots of contracted-work that were kept being pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, I was desperate to postpone my service for longer."
"I made a foolish choice out of pure desperation. When my concerns about the company and contract-related matters were resolved, I thought it was about time I fulfilled my duty. So, I began my alternative military service. That was last October.", he added.
Then, the K-pop star shared his regret, "In the making the choice, I justified my behavior. I'm so sorry to those with epilepsy and their families. I also want to say sorry to all the soldiers serving their military service at the moment."
He carried on to express his apology to his fans too, "My deepest apologies to fans who had been supporting me day and night, not just as a singer, but also as a person. I'm sorry for making you feel devastated. I wanted to be the guy that everyone looked up to, but I'm embarrassed to stand here like this right now. It turned out I wasn't a good enough person to enter the tower of love that you built for me."
Afterward, RAVI notified fans what he decided to do with his team, "I made a choice to leave VIXX. I don't want the rest of the members to go through anything else bad because of me. I don't want to be a disgrace to the group anymore. I would like to sincerely thank them for the last 11 years together. And I'm truly sorry to them for all this."
Lastly, RAVI said, "I feel like I'm a person who still has much to learn. The criticism that I'm getting now is something I have to deal with for sure. Please do keep criticizing me so that I can regret my act even more, and really learn from it. I know that my faults won't disappear with these words, but I'll make sure that I learn valuable lesson from this occasion. I'm sincerely sorry."
RAVI made debut as a rapper of VIXX in May 2012; after the end of his contract with his former agency Jellyfish Entertainment in 2019, he established two agencies―GROOVL1N and THE L1VE LABEL.
(Credit= 'ravithecrackkidz' Instagram, 'RealVIXX' Facebook)