“Squid Game” actor O Yeong-su has been charged with sexual misconduct, the South Korean prosecutor told AFP on Friday.

The 78-year-old became the first South Korean to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series in January for his performance as a seemingly vulnerable old man in the Netflix megahit dystopian thriller.

According to local reports, South Korean prosecutors on Thursday charged him without custody for allegedly improperly touching a woman’s body in 2017.

Everything the local media reported about O “is not factually wrong,” an official from the Suwon District Procuratorate told AFP, without giving further details.

After the news, local reports said the Seoul Ministry of Culture decided to stop airing a government commercial — about its regulatory innovation — starring O.

Squid Game – which envisions a macabre world where marginalized people compete in traditional children’s games that end deadly – became Netflix’s most popular series launch of all time, drawing 111 million fans in less than four weeks after its debut in 2021 on .

It’s still one of the most popular shows on the platform.

The show’s success has fueled South Korea’s increasingly outsized influence on global popular culture after K-pop band BTS and the Oscar-winning film ‘Parasite’ rose to worldwide fame.

Several figures in South Korea’s film industry – including the late filmmaker Kim Ki-duk and actors Cho Jae-hyun and Oh Dal-su – have faced allegations of sexual assault.