A woman I met in Seoul accused me of sexual assault the next day — I'm a tourist, police have my passport, and my flight is in a week. What now?

The police cannot keep your passport indefinitely as a way of keeping you in the country; what they can do is ask the Immigration Office for a departure suspension (출국정지, chulguk jeongji), which is a formal, time-limited measure that you can check and challenge. "For now" usually means that request is being made. The charge is grave, "too drunk to consent" cases are contested every week in Korean courts, and the evidence you describe — next-day messages and hotel footage — is the kind that decides them. Whether you fly in seven days depends on what happens in the next three, and the worst thing you can do with those days is wait at the hotel.

What this is under Korean law

A complaint that the complainant was too intoxicated to consent is investigated as quasi-rape (준강간, jun-ganggan) under Article 299 of the Criminal Act — sexual intercourse with a person in a state of unconsciousness or inability to resist — which carries the same penalty as rape: a minimum of three years' imprisonment. The legal question is not whether she had been drinking, but whether she was in a state that made her incapable of consenting, and whether you knew or accepted that possibility. Korean courts examine that on evidence of her condition before, during and after: how she walked, spoke and acted, what CCTV shows, what she and you said in messages afterward, and the consistency of her account.

A conviction brings registration of personal information (신상정보 등록, sinsang jeongbo deungnok) and removal from Korea after any sentence. An investigation that closes with a non-referral (불송치, bulsongchi) leaves none of that.

How the process works in Korea

The police take her statement, yours, the hotel and bar footage, and any messages. In a contested consent case, they may seek to compare accounts in detail before deciding whether to refer the case to the prosecutor (송치, songchi). The prosecutor decides on indictment; sex-offense cases with weak evidence of incapacity are frequently not indicted, and where they are, the trial examines the same footage and messages. Detention (구속, gusok) is sought where there is flight risk or risk to evidence; a foreign tourist is, on paper, a flight risk, which is what the passport and the departure suspension are about — and why a represented suspect with a fixed address and a lawyer receiving documents is treated differently.

Do not contact the complainant. In Korean practice, contact after a complaint is read as pressure and is itself a basis for detention, regardless of what the messages say.

Your situation as a foreign national

Your interview was taken through an interpreter you could not follow; that matters. You are entitled to competent interpretation, and a statement taken through inadequate interpretation can be challenged — but only if you say so now, through counsel, rather than later. You are also entitled to consular notification under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention; the Australian consulate can visit and confirm treatment but cannot represent you.

On the departure suspension: counsel can confirm within a day whether one has been requested or imposed and for how long. Suspensions are typically imposed for a set period and can be extended; they can also be lifted on application when the investigation no longer requires your presence — for example, once your statement is complete, evidence is secured, and a lawyer is on record to receive documents and, if needed, arrange your return. That is the path to your flight, and it is a path built by engagement, not by silence.

What to do now, and what not to do

Retain counsel today. Preserve every message with her, including the afternoon exchange, exported with timestamps. Through counsel, request preservation of the bar and hotel CCTV — hotels overwrite on short cycles. Do not post about this, do not discuss it with other travellers, and do not go back to the police station for a "clarification" without a lawyer. If a second interview is requested, prepare your account with your lawyer beforehand and insist on a qualified interpreter.

From a former police investigator's perspective

In intoxication-consent cases, investigators are reconstructing a timeline, and the two pieces of evidence they weigh most are the footage of her walking into and out of the hotel and the messages exchanged afterward. A complainant who walks steadily, converses, and sends friendly messages the next day presents the investigator with a file that is hard to refer. What turns such a file against a suspect is his own conduct: contacting her, changing his account between interviews, or vanishing. A foreign tourist who lawyers up on day six, secures the CCTV and says nothing further is a file that closes; one who flies out on a suspended passport becomes a warrant.

Seven days is enough to do this properly if the first call is today — +82-2-522-3959 or the text consultation form.

— Hyeonghwan Chon, Managing Partner, MEGA X Law Firm Korea