Trigger warning for suicide and underage SA. 

A massive celebrity scandal has erupted in Korea, for those who haven’t been following, we’ll start with some background. (Please note, this post was last edited on Friday 13 March, and it there are constant updates. If there are new developments to the story, I’ll cover it as soon as I can.)

 

Kim Sae-ron started acting as a child, when she was 10 years old she co-starred in The Man From Nowhere. It was the highest-grossing movie in Korea in 2010, a film that has become its own legend at home, in part due to the fact that its star, Won Bin, one of the most famous people in Korea, was in his prime at the time, but hasn’t acted since then. Also, The Man From Nowhere is said to be one of the inspirations for John Wick. Here’s the movie poster, with Won Bin alongside a young Kim Sae-ron. Sharing all of this to give you a sense of the impact of the film. 

The Man From Nowhere poster

From there, Kim Sae-ron went on to more acclaim in other films and drama series. She was in Cannes by the age of 14 for a film called A Girl At My Door and praised for her performance in the role. More success followed through her teens and in 2020, around the time she turned 20, she signed with a new agency to represent her – GoldMedalist. This is a company co-founded and co-owned by Kim Soo-hyun, an extremely popular actor, one of the highest paid actors working in Korea. I have watched almost all of his dramas, I’ve talked about him here at LaineyGossip and at The Squawk, our Substack. He is a very, very, big deal not just domestically but around the world. Kim Sae-ron was the second client signed to GoldMedalist after Kim Soo-hyun. 

 

Two years later, in May 2022, after she’d wrapped on a drama series and was cast for another show, Sae-ron was involved in a car accident. She was driving on her own, under the influence, crashing into several structures, including a transformer, thereby knocking out electricity to many businesses in the area. 

Sae-ron was remorseful, she publicly apologised, paid fines, compensated business owners, and retreated from the spotlight. But this effectively ended her career. No one wanted anything to do with her, and cyber bullying is horrific in Korea. The public turned against her, the media was cruel, the internet was worse. 

Last year, on March 24, 2024, seemingly out of nowhere, Kim Sae-ron posted to IG Stories a photo of herself with Kim Soo-hyun. This is the photo.

Kim Sae-ron and Kim Soo-hyun

She quickly deleted it…but eyebrows were raised. People online began to wonder why, beyond the fact that they were represented at one point by the same agency, GoldMedalist, the two would be together and looking so…friendly. Kim Soo-hyun is 12 years older than Kim Sae-ron. Also, at the time, exactly a year ago in March, Kim Soo-hyun was making headlines around the world during the run of Queen of Tears, his drama that was co-broadcast on Netflix. Queen of Tears was the most-watched drama in Korea in 2024, enormous ratings at home and abroad. And by the time the series came to an end, it was one of the most popular Korean dramas OF ALL TIME, making Kim Soo-hyun more popular and famous and successful than ever. 

 

When Sae-ron posted and deleted that photo, Soo-hyun and GoldMedalist played down the significance, claiming that there was no relationship whatsoever between the two and that they didn’t know what she was trying to suggest. While some continued to whisper about this online, for the most part, the intrigue went away, and quickly. Remember, Sae-ron was an outcast, shamed and shunned after her DUI. Many people brushed this off as the unhinged act of a “crazy” young woman. 

But then…February 16, 2025, just last month, Kim Sae-ron was found dead by suicide. Her death made international headlines – I saw coverage in PEOPLE, the BBC, CNN, TIME, and more. Korea, once again, was rocked by the passing of a young star who’d been subjected to online harassment. Yes, of course, driving while under the influence is an irresponsible decision. It is fortunate that no one was harmed in her case. But Sae-ron was contrite, she paid the price, was severely punished, and the punishment eventually became torture. There were YouTube accounts that routinely mocked her, followed her movements, laughed at how humbled she was serving coffee at a café, trying to make ends meet. In the aftermath of her death, Korea has been reckoning with this reality. And now, this week…

A YouTube outlet called Hoverlab, also known as Garo Sero Institute, with testimony from Kim Sae-ron’s family friend, a woman she referred to as her “aunt”, reported that Kim Soo-hyun had been grooming Sae-ron since she was 15 and he was 27. “Grooming” is my description of the situation, Korean media is reporting it as “dating”, that the two were “in a relationship” for six years from 2015 until 2021, which is the year before Sae-ron’s car accident. It is also implied that this is why Sae-ron signed with GoldMedalist, under Soo-hyun’s influence. The aunt is apparently Kim Sae-ron’s mother’s best friend and is speaking on behalf of the mother who is dealing with health issues due to the grief of losing her daughter. 

 

Kim Soo-hyun and GoldMedalist came out with a strong denial right away, accusing Hoverlab of cyber harassment since this outlet has a shady reputation of either fabricating stories about celebrities or cyber bullying celebrities, which is one of the issues that people are interrogating following Sae-ron’s death. 

But Hoverlab appears to have the cooperation of Kim Sae-ron’s family and published a statement from her mother: 

“Speaking again about a daughter who is no longer with me is painful, but I want to restore her name from the damage caused by false reports. I hope she is remembered as the respected actress she was, not as a tabloid figure.”

Hoverlab also doubled down on their reporting, with a previously unseen photo of Sae-ron and Soo-hyun that they claim was taken when she was 15/16 and, according to them, proves that he was sexually abusing her. This photo is similar to the one that she shared on IG stories last year. This new photo is in the tweet below, right next to another shot of them together when she was even younger from when the two first met. 

 

That was Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, yet another series of photos was released by Hoverlab that show Kim Soo-hyun in military uniform again kissing Sae-ron on the cheek, presumably taken when he was serving mandatory duty. He would have been 30-ish, she around 17. Hoverlab has also published letters that he wrote to Sae-ron from the army. Clearly the family has access Sae-ron’s phone and personal belongings and are sharing them with the outlet. 

 

There are also texts messages that have come out from Sae-ron desperately pleading with Soo-hyun for sympathy. According to a note purportedly written by Sae-ron herself (revealed by Hoverlab), the alleged grooming – referring to as their “relationship” in most Korean media – began in 2015 and ended in 2021. After her accident in 2022, GoldMedalist helped to pay off Sae-ron’s debts and fines (around US$550,000). At the end of 2023, early 2024, Sae-ron received a certified letter from GoldMedalist demanding payback, which she interpreted to be a threat to sue her if she didn’t come up with the money. She was in no position to settle the loan, but she was trying to mount a comeback, and she desperately texted Soo-hyun to tell him that she as soon as she could find work, she’d be paying down her debt, and if he could please just let her try her best. He didn’t answer. 

This, supposedly, is why she posted and deleted that initial photo on Instagram – to get his attention. Following that, however, any action to address the financial situation happened offline, not known to the public. Until now, as Sae-ron’s family seems to be actively participating with Hoverlab in illuminating what she had experienced before her death and how she was struggling. What’s complicating an already complicated and horribly sad story is that Hoverlab, as mentioned, has its own checkered past. They, too, have contributed to and caused the emotional distress of Korean idols and celebrities. So the fact that they’re now crusading on Kim Sae-ron’s behalf, for some, seems hypocritical. 

But then again, one could argue that legacy and mainstream media in Korea didn’t want any part of this story because of Kim Soo-hyun’s influence. There was a significant power imbalance between Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Sae-ron both in private and in public. When he first started allegedly grooming her, he was coming off two major television hits and was known as the CF king, the actor with the most endorsements. Then, at the time of her death, once again he was at the summit of Korean entertainment with over a dozen partnerships with major brands, his face plastered everywhere. So an online tabloid may have been the only outlet willing to report on these allegations. Now, because of Hoverlab’s exclusives, Dispatch – kind of like the TMZ of Korea – is on it. And they confirmed Wednesday that it was an “open secret” among Kim Soo-hyun’s friends that he was allegedly grooming Kim Sae-ron; again, those are my words not theirs. They keep calling it “dating”. 

Over the first three days of the scandal, Kim Soo-hyun and GoldMedalist continued to deny the allegations and they released a statement on Thursday about how they will issue a more formal statement next week to address the “baseless rumours by presenting a clear and substantiated position”. No lawsuit has been filed at the time of this writing. 

Then, today, they changed course and put out a lengthy statement given the urgency of the situation, and that Kim Soo-hyun is in a state of “severe psychological instability”. You can read the full statement here but these are the key points: 

Despite denying last year and again this week that Soo-hyun and Sae-ron were ever involved, GoldMedalist is now saying that they were indeed in a “relationship” but only after Sae-ron became an adult. According to their version of the story, they dated from the summer of 2019 to the fall of 2020 and the photos that have been shared online of the two of them were taken during that period, and not before when Sae-ron was a minor. They’re pointing to meta data and clothing as proof, noting that the t-shirt that Sae-ron was wearing was only released by the brand in 2019 (which online fans have already said is bullsh-t, that the tee was available as early as 2016). 

As for the financials, GoldMedalist is calling it a misunderstanding on Kim Sae-ron’s part and that the letter she received was not a prelude to legal action but just a formality that the company had to abide by in order to write off the loans they gave her to pay off her fines. They’ve shared balance statements and other documentation to prove that they were never chasing her for money, it was just that they had to make sure that they could properly account for the money and not getting back the money for audit purposes. Included in this part of the statement is written notice from Kim Sae-ron’s lawyer thanking GoldMedalist for handling the payments. 

GoldMedalist insists that Kim Soo-hyun was never aware or included in any of the money matters between Kim Sae-ron and the company and never personally lent her money. 

For me, the financials are the only part of this that seem reasonably explained. The other part of it that has to do with her age, how young she was, and when exactly it all started, is still super f-cking sketch. Like why he was writing letters to her in the military when she was a minor. Her family is apparently planning a rebuttal to Kim Soo-hyun and GoldMedalist’s latest statement and the internet is already highlighting the inconsistencies in their claims about when photos of the two were taken and how old she would have been. 

 

But just as it is in other parts of the world, misogyny is deeply entrenched in Korean culture. And over the last 20 years or so, as Korean women have organised and mobilised against harassment and sexual violence and advocated for more rights and opportunities, their efforts have been met with increasing resentment from men, particularly young men. This has spilled over into the political arena – during the 2022 presidential election, (now disgraced) Yoon Suk Yeol appealed to young male voters on a platform of anti-feminism and won. Just last year, Korea made headlines because of the deepfake sex crime crisis that was prevalent across the country’s social networks. Per Human Rights Watch: 

“Online gender-based violence is an increasing problem globally but is especially widespread in South Korea. Judges, prosecutors, police, and lawmakers in South Korea, the vast majority of them men, do not take these crimes seriously enough. Women seeking police help are often dismissed, retraumatized, and even ridiculed. There is very little sex education in South Korea’s schools to help young people understand how wrong this conduct is. These crimes happen against a backdrop of extreme gender inequality, where there is a 31 percent gender pay gap and less than 13 percent of board members are women.”

This is the backdrop against which Kim Sae-ron’s posthumous revelations are being exposed. There is a lot of backlash against Kim Soo-hyun now, like today, over the age difference and everything that he allegedly kept undercover and how manipulative it seems that he’s allegedly been, both to Kim Sae-ron and with the public. But if this was an “open secret” before, and he continued to be celebrated in his industry, and perhaps enabled (FOR SIX YEARS), there is likely silent support for him in the business and in the wider public…again…not unlike in North America where a man can be elected to office despite a mountain of evidence that showed he paid for sex with underage girls multiple times, with support from the highest office, and now hosts his own f-cking talk show.

Every day Hoverlab has dropped new information on a gradual, uncomfortable drip. It’s undeniably unsettling the way this is unfolding online, in digital spaces that once terrorised Kim Sae-ron. The court of public opinion is now swinging in her favour when she can no longer benefit from it. At the same time, this is her family who seems to be opening up her hard drive and, if all of this is true, trying to give her a voice from the grave. Kim Sae-ron died by suicide on February 16, which is Kim Soo-hyun’s birthday. 

Photo credits: Seokyong Lee/ Penta Press/ Shutterstock

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