The Korean society, like elsewhere in the world, often witnesses sex scandals involving politicians, government officials, professors, teachers and celebrities. But the latest two cases -- one involving a member of the National Assembly and the other involving five teachers in the same high school -- should be a cause for big concern.

The scandal involving Rep. Sim Hag-bong of the ruling Saenuri Party looks like a nasty soap opera, starting with a woman accusing the lawmaker of raping her at a hotel in Daegu last month.

But the woman later dropped her accusation, telling police officers that she could have resisted the lawmaker, but did not, and she did not want him to be punished. So police dropped charges.

The woman’s about-face raised suspicions that Sim might have paid her off to change her testimony. The opposition has every right to demand a reinvestigation of the case. Female lawmakers of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy also did the right thing by taking the case to the National Assembly Ethics Committee.

It has yet to be determined what really took place between Sim, 54, and the woman, 48, but what’s not disputable is that -- as police found on security camera -- they were together in a hotel room during the day, at 11 a.m.

Sim belongs to the National Assembly’s Science, ICT, Future Planning, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, which was in session at the very time he was staying with the woman at a hotel room about 300 kilometers away from the parliament in Seoul.

Should not this alone be sufficient for him to forfeit his parliamentary seat? Under mounting pressure, Sim quit the ruling party, but it can never be the only punishment a lawmaker like him should be subject to.

If Sim’s case is an isolated one -- however deploring it might be -- the case of the five teachers in a Seoul school -- including the principal -- is outrageous in that sexual misdeeds there took place on a massive scale and much worse, it had been hushed up for more than a year.

Education officials and law-enforcement authorities have yet to look into full details of the case, but there are convincing allegations that the five male teachers engaged in habitual sexual molestations and harassments against female teachers and students for a long time.

Most disturbing is the allegation that the principal, himself accused of sexual misconduct, ignored complaints from female teachers and students, and did not report the cases to the municipal education office or law-enforcement authorities, which he is required to do under the law.

Thanks to the principal’s apparent patronage, a male teacher who was accused of tearing up clothes of a female teacher trying to make unwanted sexual advances could stay at the school for more than one year by taking various forms of leaves. He was transferred only last March, 13 months after the case.

The school’s case shows that all the fuss and set of measures announced by education authorities whenever there were sex scandals on campuses have had little effect in curbing the growing ill.