The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a retrial for three men convicted of raping a school teacher in a southwestern provincial village last year.

The top court sent the case back to the Gwangju High Court, quashing the previous ruling that cleared them of some of the charges, citing the settlement reached with the victim.

The high court sentenced each of the defendants -- only identified by their last names Kim, Lee and Park -- to seven to 10 years in jail, reducing the punishment from 17 to 25 years handed down by the lowest court.

They were indicted in June last year on charges of colluding in raping the female teacher and inflicting injuries on the victim in an island town in Sinan, about 400 kilometers southwest of Seoul. They also forcedly intoxicated the victim and filmed the scene.

The case shocked the public because they were parents of children from the same school where the victim had taught. (Yonhap)