A Seoul appellate court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling and sentenced the father of a teenage girl to a suspended prison term for beating her with a bamboo stick and forcing her to do long physical workouts.

The father, identified as Choi, 48, was indicted last year on charges of harsh treatment of his 15-year-old daughter. In addition to beating her with a bamboo stick, he was accused of forcing her to run on a treadmill for more than an hour at a time and to perform other workouts as punishment for not studying hard or being wasteful.

The father even kept the girl from attending school, and his ex-wife reported him to authorities.

Choi claimed the treatment was part of his way of raising and disciplining his daughter.

The appellate division of the Seoul Central District Court did not buy his argument, however, and reaffirmed the lower court sentence of four months imprisonment, suspended for two years.

"Considering the reasons and methods of his punishments, and the victim’s age and gender, what he did to his daughter cannot be seen as objectively reasonable in light of social norms," presiding judge Lee Jae-young said. (Yonhap News)