Falhon Cyril

I did read your comment carefully, and there is one point where I accept your clarification. You wrote that Boo Ji-seok “did not file or initiate any complaint or judicial proceedings against Kim Soo Hyun under that legal assistance agreement” and that the later complaint was filed only after the audio recording emerged. On that chronology, I agree: unless the actual terms of the earlier agreement establish otherwise, I would not retroactively describe the May 7 complaint as something that had already been contemplated under that agreement.

That said, this does not make Boo Ji-seok’s later involvement insignificant. He jointly participated in the March 27 press conference, presented disputed KakaoTalk material as involving Kim Soo Hyun, later participated in the May 7 press conference involving the recording, and by May 2026 his name appeared as a suspect in the investigation even though Kim Soo Hyun’s side said it had not originally filed a complaint against him. None of that proves his guilt, but it is relevant when discussing how directly involved he became in the dissemination of the disputed material.

Where I still disagree with you is this sentence: “I accurately presented what follows from the prosecutor’s indictment and what can reasonably be inferred from the court’s rejection of Kim Se-ui’s challenge to his detention.” Those are two very different things. An indictment tells us what prosecutors allege and what they believe their evidence establishes. It is not a judicial finding. More importantly, the rejection of a detention review cannot reasonably be converted into a finding by the court that the factual allegations in the indictment are true. The detention proceedings concerned whether Kim Se-ui’s detention remained legally justified. The original warrant was reported as being based on concerns about destruction of evidence and flight, and the later review was rejected because the court found no sufficient grounds to overturn the detention. That is not a verdict on whether the recording was fabricated, whether every disputed statement was false, or whether every allegation in the indictment has been proven.

You also wrote that “certain aggravated offenses involving criminal groups fall within the jurisdiction of a three-judge panel; hence my view regarding the transfer of the case.” The case has now in fact been transferred, but the reported reason does not support that explanation. On August 19, the Seoul Central District Court made a 재정합의 decision and reassigned the case from Criminal Division 14, which had a single judge, to Criminal Collegiate Division 26, which has three judges. Korean reporting describes 재정합의 as a procedure used when the importance, complexity or social impact of a case warrants consideration by a collegiate panel. The publicly reported indictment includes defamation, violations of the Sexual Violence Punishment Act and the Stalking Punishment Act, as well as coercion/threat-related allegations. I have not found a reliable report saying that the reassignment occurred because Kim Se-ui was charged with an aggravated “criminal group” offense. So your expectation that the case might move to a three-judge panel turned out to be correct, but the legal basis you are now giving for that prediction is not what the court or the reporting says happened.

And regarding your sentence, “Nowhere did I state that the court had already rendered a verdict on these matters”: I know you did not literally say that a verdict had been rendered. My concern is more precise. It is possible to give allegations judicial weight without explicitly using the word “verdict.” Treating the indictment together with the detention decision as supporting factual conclusions risks doing exactly that. The prosecution has reached conclusions; the trial court has not yet adjudicated those conclusions.

The same distinction matters with MIDO. You are correct that there is now an actual civil judgment: MIDO’s claim for approximately 570 million won was dismissed because the court found that grounds for terminating the advertising contract had not been established. But calling it a “precedent” should be qualified. It is the first comparable ruling among these advertiser disputes and may certainly influence the others, but a first-instance district court judgment is not binding precedent on the other courts.

More importantly, the reported judgment establishes that MIDO did not establish contractual grounds for termination. It does not, from the information publicly available so far, amount to a civil-court judgment declaring every allegation made against Kim Soo Hyun false. Kim Soo Hyun’s lawyers have interpreted the decision more broadly as rejecting an attempt to shift losses caused by false third-party allegations onto him, but that is their interpretation of the ruling and should be identified as such.

Finally, I agree with you that the postponement of other civil cases pending related criminal proceedings indicates that those courts consider the criminal proceedings relevant to overlapping factual issues. What it does not indicate is that those courts have already reached the same conclusion about those issues. Waiting for another court to determine facts is essentially the opposite of having already determined them.

So my disagreement is not based on claims you never made. It is about the evidentiary and procedural weight being given to developments that have occurred. An indictment, a detention ruling, a transfer to a collegiate panel and a civil contractual judgment are all significant developments, but they each establish different things, and they should not be merged into a broader judicial conclusion that none of them individually establishes.

There is also something in your own example that I think is worth examining. You are 39 with a 17-year-old child, which means you became a mother at around 22. I am not judging that decision at all, but that was an enormous adult decision involving another human life, made only about three years after the age you are now describing as essentially “a child.” At 22, were you incapable of understanding relationships, consequences, work, education or parenthood because a 31-year-old would have seemed much older than you? Presumably not. You were a young adult making your own choices. That is precisely my point: young adult is not the same thing as child. I completely understand saying, “At 19 I would not have wanted that relationship for myself or my daughter.” That is reasonable. What I disagree with is moving from “I personally think that age gap is unhealthy” to assuming predatory intent. Kim Soo Hyun was 31, yes. Kim Sae Ron was a young adult, yes. The age gap was substantial, yes. None of those facts alone establishes grooming, coercion or exploitation. Adults with large age gaps can have unhealthy relationships, healthy relationships, casual relationships, bad breakups or relationships they later regret. The age difference is something you can judge morally; it is not evidence of a crime.

There is also context that tends to disappear when people reduce this to “31-year-old man hunts 19-year-old girl.” Kim Soo Hyun had just completed almost 20 months of military service when he returned to civilian life on July 1, 2019. Yonhap reported that he was 31 and only then beginning to rebuild his acting career. Gold Medalist later stated that the relationship began in summer 2019 and lasted until autumn 2020. So, according to the acknowledged timeline, this was a newly discharged, unmarried actor restarting his civilian and professional life entering a relationship with another adult actor he already knew. You can still dislike that age gap, but describing those bare facts as inherently predatory adds an intention that the evidence does not establish. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20190701003800315 https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20250314005900315

And the fact that the relationship ended after roughly a year does not prove he “used” her either. Most relationships end. People date someone they care about and later discover they are incompatible, their lives move in different directions, or their careers take priority. We simply do not know why their private relationship ended, so I am not going to invent a romantic story in his favor any more than I want people inventing an abusive one against him. That is why I keep separating your personal reaction from the accusation. If your daughter at 19 introduced you to a 31-year-old boyfriend and you said, “Absolutely not, I don't trust this,” I would completely understand you as a mother. You do not need forensic evidence to decide who you personally trust around your daughter. But we need a much higher standard before publicly saying that a specific real man groomed, abused or sexually exploited a specific real woman. In this case police actually investigated the alleged underage relationship and found no reliable or objective evidence establishing it. That is where “what could have happened” has to give way to “what can actually be demonstrated.”

You are repeating the same claims after saying you had “nothing more to add.”

The “13 was legal” argument is legally simplistic and irrelevant. Korean law did not make sexual abuse of a 13-year-old generally lawful, and Article 305 was amended in 2020 to extend automatic statutory protection to ages 13–15. More importantly, nobody has established that Kim Soo Hyun had sex with Kim Sae Ron at 13, 15, or at any other minor age.
https://www.law.go.kr/LSW/eng/engLsInfoR.do?lsiSeq=253323

Police investigated the alleged underage relationship and found no reliable or objective evidence establishing it, so the case was closed without referral. Some of the key material promoted publicly as proof was also found to have been manipulated or otherwise unreliable.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260729008600315
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-21/national/socialAffairs/Allegations-that-actor-Kim-Soohyun-dated-the-late-Kim-Saeron-as-a-minor-were-false-police-conclude/2597903

You are free to dislike him. But “groomer,” “exploited vulnerable women,” and “horrible human being” are conclusions you decided on first and now protect from every contrary fact. At this point there is nothing new to debate.

I agree with the general point about fabricated evidence and the danger of cancel culture, but a few legal details need correcting because we should not exaggerate facts even when they support KSH.

The May finding was a police finding, not a judicial verdict. Police concluded that key material used against Kim Soo Hyun had been manipulated, including KakaoTalk evidence and the disputed recording.
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-21/national/socialAffairs/Allegations-that-actor-Kim-Soohyun-dated-the-late-Kim-Saeron-as-a-minor-were-false-police-conclude/2597903

Kim Se-ui is detained and indicted, but not convicted. His detention was based on concerns such as flight risk/evidence destruction; it does not itself prove guilt.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260526004651315

The transfer to a three-judge panel also does not prove prosecutors or the court have classified this as an aggravated “criminal group” case. I can find no official statement saying that.
https://www.starnewskorea.com/en/star/2026/08/29/2026082714161186054

And Boo Ji-seok did in fact participate in filing complaints against Kim Soo Hyun, including under the Child Welfare Act, so saying he “filed no complaint” is incorrect.
https://news.sbs.co.kr/amp/news.amp?news_id=N1008149380

Finally, the Mido ruling did not say “compensation cannot be demanded from an innocent person.” The court rejected Mido’s specific contractual claim against Gold Medalist. It is an important first-instance victory, but it does not automatically decide every other advertiser lawsuit.
https://www.starnewskorea.com/en/star/2026/08/27/2026082715462740131

The evidence is already strong enough. We do not need to improve it with conclusions the courts and prosecutors have not actually made.

“He’s a groomer” is not an opinion. It is a serious factual accusation. So prove it. Police investigated the alleged underage relationship and did not refer Kim Soo Hyun for prosecution because there was insufficient objective evidence. Separate police materials also concluded that important evidence used to support the underage narrative had been manipulated or fabricated.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260729008600315
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-21/national/socialAffairs/Allegations-that-actor-Kim-Soohyun-dated-the-late-Kim-Saeron-as-a-minor-were-false-police-conclude/2597903

Kim Se-ui is currently detained and indicted over conduct including alleged false and manipulated material. He has not yet been convicted, so I will not pretend otherwise. But his situation should at least demonstrate that inventing serious accusations about somebody is not harmless entertainment.
https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260623158700004

And then you add that “fangirls need to go to mental asylums.” So while accusing somebody else of abuse without evidence, you are simultaneously cyberbullying people who disagree with you. That tells me considerably more about the quality of your argument than another repetition of the word “groomer.” Hiding behind a pseudonymous account does not make an accusation more credible. Without evidence, “he’s a groomer” has about as much evidentiary value as a grain of sand in the ocean. If you have proof, bring it. If all you have is an anonymous account, an insult and an accusation investigators could not substantiate, there really is nothing here to debate.

At this point, your argument is no longer about what the evidence shows. It is about what you think could have happened. “19 is still a teenager” is linguistically true. Legally, she was an adult. Under South Korea’s Civil Act, Article 4, a person reaches adulthood at 19. Korean Criminal Act Article 305 also specifically criminalizes sexual acts by adults aged 19+ with people aged 13 to under 16. Kim Sae Ron was 19 when the relationship acknowledged by Kim Soo Hyun began.
https://law.go.kr/lsLinkCommonInfo.do?chrClsCd=010202&lsJoLnkSeq=1004361007
https://www.law.go.kr/lsLinkCommonInfo.do?chrClsCd=010202&lsJoLnkSeq=1028311193

You can dislike 31 and 19. That is a moral opinion. But “I dislike the age gap” does not become “therefore he may have groomed or assaulted her.” Statistics about age-gap relationships can identify general risks. They cannot establish grooming in one specific relationship without evidence of grooming behavior. There is also a problem with constantly saying “he chose her” as though Kim Sae Ron had no agency. She was not an object selected by an older man. By 2019 she had already been a professional actress for about a decade, had her own career and her own agency. In a 2017 interview with Ilgan Sports, she herself said that since she was young she had always named Kim Soo Hyun as an actor she wanted to work with. That proves admiration, not romance, but it matters because she was an individual with her own interests and choices.
https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/korea/kim-saeron-is-growing-up-and-looking-for-roles/11597085

And when their acknowledged relationship began in summer 2019, she was still represented by YG Entertainment. YG confirmed her contract ended only in November 2019. She joined Gold Medalist in January 2020. So Kim Soo Hyun was older and more famous, yes, but he was not her employer or agency boss when the relationship began.
https://www.soompi.com/article/1366613wpp/kim-sae-ron-leaves-yg-entertainment
https://www.soompi.com/article/1374709wpp/kim-soo-hyun-seo-ye-ji-and-kim-sae-ron-sign-with-new-enterta

The chronology is also inconvenient for the grooming narrative. Kim Soo Hyun’s lawyer later released military letters and said he had another girlfriend from 2016 until spring 2019, including throughout his military service. Around 150 letters were reportedly written to that girlfriend. Separately, Korea JoongAng Daily reported that Kim Sae Ron had another relationship with a well-known K-pop artist around 2018. Those reports directly conflict with the simple story of one continuous secret KSH/KSR relationship from 2015 onward.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/others/20250930/kim-soo-hyuns-military-letters-surface-amid-allegations-over-late-kim-sae-ron
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-05-21/entertainment/television/Timeline-of-Kim-Saerons-relationships-raises-questions-on-authenticity-of-familys-abuse-claims/2312406

Then police actually investigated the underage allegation. On July 29, 2026, Seoul Seongdong Police declined to refer Kim Soo Hyun because of insufficient evidence. That is not a court acquittal, but it certainly matters. You cannot keep responding to every contrary fact with “he still could have done it.” A theory that survives every possible piece of contrary evidence is no longer being tested.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260729008600315

There is also a double standard in the way fandom talks about sex and boundaries. Korean entertainment has a specific term, sasaeng, for obsessive fans who invade celebrities’ privacy. Korea JoongAng Daily documented sasaeng behavior including breaking into homes, stealing belongings and unwanted physical contact. In July 2026, two women were arrested after allegedly entering boy group CORTIS’s dormitory. Female fans crossing sexual or physical boundaries with young male idols are not harmless because they are women. The standard should be the same in both directions.
https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/lifestyle/when-an-autograph-isnt-enough/11127780
https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/entertainment/two-women-arrested-for-allegedly-breaking-into-boy-band-cortiss-dormitory/12791112

So I also find the sentence “I will never trust this guy around any young woman or girl” revealing. You say you will not call him a pedophile, yet you are still implying that young women and girls are unsafe around him. That is essentially the same accusation delivered indirectly. You can say the age difference gives you the “ick.” Fine. You can say you think dating a 19-year-old at 31 was a bad decision. Fine. You can refuse to watch him forever. But once you move into “he may have groomed her,” “he may have assaulted her,” and “I don't trust him around girls,” you are making much more serious claims. Those require evidence about Kim Soo Hyun, not statistics about other relationships and not the argument that nobody can ever prove something did not happen. And saying he “got his career back because they cannot prove grooming or assault” reverses the burden of proof. People do not have to prove that they never committed crimes nobody has established they committed. You have already conceded that no crime has been proven. That should matter more than an “ick.” At some point suspicion has to be capable of losing against evidence. Otherwise it is not caution anymore; it is a conclusion you decided on first and protected afterward.

You keep using “grooming” as though repeating the word turns it into evidence. It does not. If you have time to write another theory, you have time to check the timeline. I did. Again. Researching it takes less time than inventing another story around him. The allegation was that they had been together since late 2015, when Kim Sae Ron was 15. Look at what both of them were actually doing. In 2015, Kim Soo Hyun was filming The Producers from April, promoting it after broadcast, travelling for overseas events and preparing Real. Kim Sae Ron began filming Glamorous Temptation that August. None of this makes private contact impossible. What it does mean is that a supposed secret relationship beginning when she was 15 requires actual evidence, not imagination.
https://www.soompi.com/article/715959wpp/producer-roles-of-gong-hyo-jin-kim-soo-hyun-iu-and-cha-tae-hyun-revealed
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20150806004200315
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20150831002300315
https://www.soompi.com/article/760539wpp/kim-sae-ron-and-nam-joo-hyuk-confirmed-to-play-young-sweethearts

In 2016, Kim Soo Hyun spent months filming Real, which finished shooting on June 30 on Yeongjong Island. Kim Sae Ron was filming Mirror of the Witch, including documented shooting in Gyeongju, and the drama aired from May to July. In November she signed with YG Entertainment while KSH remained with KeyEast. And the supposed 2016 KakaoTalk “proof” later became very important for another reason: police materials reportedly concluded that screenshots originally identifying the counterpart as “Unknown” had been altered to identify Kim Soo Hyun.
https://www.soompi.com/article/873507wpp/first-stills-kim-soo-hyuns-new-movie-real-revealed
https://www.soompi.com/article/848681wpp/yoon-shi-yoon-and-kim-sae-ron-meet-for-the-first-time-in-mirror-of-the-witch-stills
https://www.soompi.com/article/914267wpp/kim-sae-ron-signs-new-contract-yg-entertainment
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-21/national/socialAffairs/Allegations-that-actor-Kim-Soohyun-dated-the-late-Kim-Saeron-as-a-minor-were-false-police-conclude/2597903

In 2017, Kim Soo Hyun promoted Real and then enlisted for active military service on October 23. He remained in the Army until July 1, 2019. Kim Sae Ron continued acting and filming during that period. KSH’s legal side later also produced material concerning another relationship they said lasted from 2016 until spring 2019, including numerous military letters. That directly conflicts with the simplistic story that he was secretly maintaining one continuous romantic relationship with Kim Sae Ron throughout those same years.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/shows-dramas/20171023/actor-kim-soo-hyun-joins-military
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20190701003800315
https://www.soompi.com/article/1022615wpp/kim-sae-ron-opens-left-school-acting
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-05-21/entertainment/television/Timeline-of-Kim-Saerons-relationships-raises-questions-on-authenticity-of-familys-abuse-claims/2312406

Yes, there was contact during his military service. There is a June 2018 letter to Kim Sae Ron and reporting about a meeting during military leave. His side says the letter was one of friendly letters sent to acquaintances and that the meeting occurred at his Seongsu home with family present. Contact proves they knew each other. It does not prove sexual grooming.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2025/03/688_394154.html
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/shows-dramas/20250403/kim-soo-hyun-releases-materials-to-refute-underage-dating-claims

Then comes 2019. Kim Soo Hyun left the military on July 1. Kim Sae Ron was already an adult. Gold Medalist’s acknowledged dating timeline begins in summer 2019. One supposedly incriminating photograph was later dated through metadata to December 24, 2019, and another outfit used online as supposed “2016 proof” was reportedly not commercially available until 2019.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20190701003800315
https://www.soompi.com/article/1353569wpp/kim-sae-ron-lee-dong-gun-jeon-hye-bin-and-more-gather-for-leverage-script-reading
https://www.soompi.com/article/1729865wpp/kim-soo-hyuns-agency-releases-official-statement-regarding-recent-allegations

And then actual investigators examined the underage allegations. In May 2026, police warrant material reportedly said important 2016 KakaoTalk material had been altered and the disputed audio had been AI-manipulated. On July 29, Seoul Seongdong Police separately declined to refer Kim Soo Hyun for prosecution over the Child Welfare Act allegation because there was insufficient objective evidence.
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-21/national/socialAffairs/Allegations-that-actor-Kim-Soohyun-dated-the-late-Kim-Saeron-as-a-minor-were-false-police-conclude/2597903
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260729008600315

Two more corrections:
Kim Sae Ron was not “decades younger.” Kim Soo Hyun was born in 1988 and Kim Sae Ron in 2000. The difference was 12 years. You can dislike 31 and 19. Use the real numbers. And the old Korean age-of-consent argument does not prove grooming either. Before the 2020 amendment, Article 305 automatically treated sexual intercourse with someone under 13 as statutory rape. The law was later expanded to protect 13-to-15-year-olds where the other person is 19 or older. That historical threshold never meant rape, coercion or child sexual abuse were simply legal.
https://www.law.go.kr/LSW/eng/engLsInfoR.do?lsiSeq=253323

So yes, you are free never to support him. Nobody is asking you to become a fan. But “I dislike him” and “he groomed a child” are completely different statements. One is an opinion. The other is a factual accusation requiring evidence. And asking whether I have “vested interests” is funny when you keep returning to the same discussion from the opposite side. Are you paid anti-PR? Obviously not. We are both choosing to spend time discussing the case. The difference is that I spend mine checking what actually happened. If you have enough time to type “grooming” again, you have enough time to open the sources. Facts are usually much quicker to verify than stories are to invent.

I think this is where we fundamentally disagree: you are turning “he could perhaps have done more” into “he therefore bears some responsibility for the outcome.” Those are not the same thing. I am 45, and even at my age I cannot honestly say that, if an ex contacted me about a financial problem years after we separated, I would automatically understand that person’s psychological state or know what I was supposed to do. Kim Soo Hyun was in his early thirties, not a therapist or suicide-prevention specialist. Being older, successful and famous does not give someone clairvoyance. Yes, she contacted him. But look at the actual context. According to Gold Medalist, the debt was the company’s corporate matter, not money Kim Soo Hyun had personally lent her. When she contacted him, he checked with the company about what was happening. The company’s position was that the legal/accounting matter had to be handled through the appropriate professionals, and Gold Medalist’s lawyers subsequently contacted her side about repayment arrangements. That is very different from “she begged him for help and he simply abandoned her.”
https://www.soompi.com/article/1730880wpp/kim-soo-hyuns-agency-releases-new-statement-in-response-to-recent-allegations

He also explained publicly why he had not simply re-entered her life after the DUI. They had already broken up, she was involved with somebody else, and he did not think interfering in an ex-partner’s life was necessarily appropriate. He also admitted that protecting his career affected some of his decisions and acknowledged that people could criticize him for that. You can dislike that choice. I can understand it. If an ex of mine had another partner, I would also question whether suddenly inserting myself back into their life was helpful or intrusive.
https://www.soompi.com/article/1733974wpp/kim-soo-hyun-holds-press-conference-regarding-recent-allegations

And “she had nobody while he had everyone” is too absolute. We know she had family, friends, management and later romantic relationships. A former boyfriend described serious difficulties and self-harm crises during a much later period, years after her relationship with Kim Soo Hyun had ended. He personally said he believed her death had nothing to do with KSH. His interpretation is not a police finding, but it proves that her later emotional life was far more complicated than “she reached out to one old boyfriend and he failed her.”
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/20250326/kim-sae-rons-ex-boyfriend-defends-kim-soo-hyun-husband-denies-abuse-allegations

If we use your standard, where does responsibility stop? Do we blame her family for not recognizing enough? Her later partners for not helping enough? Friends for not noticing? Fans who abandoned her after the DUI? The Korean public for treating one scandal as permanent social exile? The press for feeding that humiliation? Employers who stopped offering her work? Her neighbors for not realizing she was struggling that day? You can distribute retrospective blame almost infinitely once you already know the ending. That does not mean everyone who could theoretically have behaved differently bears responsibility for the death.

This is also why I struggle with “he knew better.” Successful Korean celebrities are not necessarily emotionally wiser than ordinary people. Their lives are extremely managed. Managers, lawyers and agencies arrange schedules, contracts, press responses, travel and crises precisely because artists spend extraordinary amounts of time filming, promoting, advertising, travelling and maintaining an image. Some idols and actors have described going years with very little meaningful time off. That environment can actually leave people remarkably inexperienced with ordinary life problems despite being highly successful professionally.

We see famous people make surprisingly poor judgments constantly. RM and Jin publicly praised Chris Brown despite everything known about his history. Cha Eun Woo became embroiled in a serious tax dispute involving a company structure despite being one of Korea’s most commercially successful celebrities. Fame, intelligence and professional discipline do not mean somebody will automatically make the morally perfect decision in every personal or financial situation.

Kim Sae Ron herself was also not simply a helpless young woman whose life needed to be managed by an older boyfriend. She had worked in entertainment since childhood. She had dealt with media attention, family financial problems and professional pressures for most of her life. She was capable of handling responsibilities that many people her age had never encountered. And the sentence “he was attractive and successful, he could have chosen anyone and chose her” still bothers me. People do not select romantic partners from a catalogue according to who would look least suspicious to strangers years later. He fell for a particular person. The twelve-year age difference can make you uncomfortable; that is a legitimate personal judgment. But the age gap itself tells us nothing about why he loved her or whether his intentions were exploitative. A twelve-year or larger age difference is hardly extraordinary among adult celebrity couples. Just among famous male actors and musicians, you have Jay-Z and Beyoncé at about 12 years; Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, 12; Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves, 13; George Clooney and Amal Clooney, 17; Eddie Murphy and Paige Butcher, 17; Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, 20; Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart, more than 20; Stanley Tucci and Felicity Blunt, 21; Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, 25; Kelsey Grammer and Kayte Walsh, about 25; Alec Baldwin and Hilaria Baldwin, 26; Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster, 26; David Hasselhoff and Hayley Roberts, 28; Jeff Goldblum and Emilie Livingston, about 30; Billy Joel and Alexis Roderick, about 33; Richard Gere and Alejandra Silva, 33; David Foster and Katharine McPhee, 35; Dennis Quaid and Laura Savoie, 39; Mick Jagger and Melanie Hamrick, 44; and Dick Van Dyke and Arlene Silver, 46. That is twenty examples without even trying particularly hard.

I am not claiming Kim Soo Hyun behaved perfectly. He himself has not claimed that. Maybe he wishes today that he had answered differently. Maybe he wonders whether he should have called her, whether he missed something, or why she died on his birthday. Most human beings would probably torture themselves with some version of those questions after something like this. But hindsight makes warning signs look obvious because we already know what happened. And in a way, even that private grief may have been taken away from him. Imagine an ex dying on your birthday and, before you have even processed what that means emotionally, strangers begin telling the world that you abused her, groomed her, raped her or caused her death. Every memory you had of that person becomes attached to accusation, scandal and public hatred. At some point grief can become defensiveness, emotional shutdown, anger or even repulsion—not necessarily toward the person who died, but toward everything their memory has now been forced to represent. If that happened to me, I honestly do not know whether I would still be able to access the affection I once felt. The good memories could become buried under months of blame and fabricated stories. So when people complain that Kim Soo Hyun does not publicly grieve Kim Sae Ron in the way they expect, they ignore the possibility that the public effectively stole his right to grieve normally. Instead of allowing him to remember an ex privately, they turned her death into an accusation against him. That does not tell us exactly what he feels today. But emotional distance after something like this would not surprise me at all. Sometimes people do not lose their grief because they never cared; they lose access to it because the situation surrounding the death becomes psychologically unbearable. That is why I can accept you saying, “I dislike some of the choices he made.” What I cannot accept without much stronger evidence is “he bears responsibility for her death.” Because once we use “he could have done more” as the threshold for responsibility, virtually everyone around a person who dies by suicide becomes partly responsible. And somehow, despite all the people, circumstances and years involved in Kim Sae Ron’s life, the person constantly selected for that responsibility is the famous ex-boyfriend she had stopped dating years earlier. That seems far easier than confronting how complicated her life—and suicide itself—actually was.

Exactly. And the financial scale makes the conspiracy even less convincing. Gold Medalist is a small Korean entertainment company, not HYBE, Samsung or a chaebol. Its reported revenue was about ₩21.7 billion in 2024 and only ₩11.1 billion in 2025, when it actually recorded an operating loss. Yet we are supposed to believe Kim Soo Hyun had enough hidden power to buy police investigations, judges and lawsuits against corporations with substantial resources of their own?

More importantly, Korean actors generally earn negotiated appearance fees; they do not receive Hollywood-style ownership or massive residual streams every time a successful drama is watched around the world. Being a famous Hallyu actor can make someone wealthy. It does not magically give him institutional power.

And the conspiracy contradicts what actually happened. If Kim Soo Hyun were powerful enough to control police and courts, why was he unable to stop the accusations from dominating the Korean press for more than a year, destroying endorsements, freezing projects and almost ending his career? Apparently he can control the entire justice system—but couldn't control a YouTube channel or prevent newspapers from printing allegations about him every day.

Even a former president of South Korea could not put himself beyond prosecution and the courts. The idea that an actor with a small management company somehow possesses greater control over Korean institutions requires evidence, not “he's rich” repeated until it becomes true.

You are correcting an argument I did not make. I never said “no prosecution = proven innocent.” I said the police investigated the underage allegation and found insufficient objective evidence to refer him. That is not an acquittal, but it is also not “nothing,” especially when material presented as evidence was later considered manipulated or fabricated.

Your Al Capone analogy assumes the conclusion first. We already know Al Capone was a mafia boss from extensive independent evidence. You cannot use a proven criminal to argue that Kim Soo Hyun must also be guilty despite missing evidence. That is circular reasoning.

And rape statistics do not prove this particular rape allegation. Yes, sexual violence is underreported and difficult to prosecute. That does not allow us to assign rape victimhood to a dead woman who left no authenticated rape accusation against him. Otherwise “some guilty men escape justice” becomes a licence to call anyone a rapist.

Psychology matters too. Kim Sae Ron’s behaviour fits unresolved attachment far more naturally than the story you are constructing. She contacted an ex years after their breakup during a vulnerable period, while she had other relationships, and then died on his birthday. That date is psychologically significant; I do not dismiss it as random. It strongly suggests he still occupied an important emotional place for her. What it does not tell us is that he raped or abused her. Longing, hurt, abandonment and wanting someone never to forget you are also established human motives. The evidence supports attachment; your rape theory requires adding facts that are not there.

And “are you paid PR?” is particularly ironic. You repeatedly return to these articles to call him a rapist, predator and evil. Does that make you paid anti-PR for a dead woman who never publicly made the accusations you are making in her name? Obviously not. It simply means we are both invested in the case.

The difference is that if stronger evidence contradicts my conclusion, I will change it. You keep treating the absence of evidence as evidence that a powerful criminal simply got away with it.

That is not skepticism. That is an unfalsifiable story.

I’m going to end this particular circle here, because I think it is starting to prove my point.

I have argued with plenty of people in these Kim Soo Hyun threads, including people who strongly disagreed with me. I have not needed to call them “retarded,” “brain-dead,” worthless, mentally ill or anything similar. Some eventually stopped arguing, some reconsidered parts of their position, and some even complimented the way I answered them despite continuing to disagree. That is evidence that you can be firm without becoming abusive.

What concerns me here is that instead of simply recognizing that certain replies crossed a line, you keep trying to justify them because the other side behaved badly first. To me, that demonstrates exactly why saying “you cannot reason with stubborn people” is not a sufficient excuse. You clearly think I am being stubborn right now, yet I am still speaking to you normally. I am challenging what you said, not insulting you personally.

And as a VIP member, I think that standard matters even more. Paying for VIP should not give someone broader permission to demean other users. If anything, being a visible, established member who has spent years criticizing MDL’s harassment culture should come with a greater responsibility to lead by example.

I am not asking anyone to be passive when KSH is falsely called a pedophile, rapist or murderer. I will continue calling those comments out myself, with evidence. But I will also call out supporters when they cross into personal abuse, and I will explicitly support the supporters who argue forcefully without doing that.

So this is my last reply on this specific disagreement. If the same behavior happens again, I will point it out when relevant, just as I will point out abusive behavior from critics. But I am not going to spend another twenty comments debating whether insults somehow become morally correct depending on who used them first.

That standard is very simple: if we oppose cyberbullying, we should not reproduce it.

I went back through the archived comments before answering this time, because you were right to challenge me if I attributed something to you that you did not actually say. You are correct on three points. First, from the threads I have saved, this appears to be our first direct interaction, so my use of “again” was wrong. Second, you did not accuse me of saying that the people researching the case were the ones posting death wishes; that part of my response belonged to an earlier discussion with @Mu Hyul and I carried it into my answer to you incorrectly. Third, you never denied writing the comments I quoted. You objected to what relevance I was giving them. So my sentence suggesting that you thought I had mentioned you “without evidence” was also inaccurate.

I have no problem correcting myself when the record shows I was wrong. That is literally the standard I keep asking everyone else to follow.

Where I still disagree with you is on the behavior itself. If by “I no longer waste my energy on trolls showing them the right path” you mean you no longer try to educate or persuade them, fair enough. But you are still actively engaging them. On August 28 in this article you told @tomo their “head is just for decoration,” told them to “develop r smooth brain,” told @stayhidaya to use coloring books because reading was too difficult, and then wrote “My argument for u is that u are r3tard3d.” On August 29 you told @freespeech their head was “just for decoration” and continued the coloring-book insults with @take-to-the-sky. Those comments are still visible.

And this pattern predates this article. In the earlier “Kim Soo Hyun to resume activities after a year-long hiatus” thread you told @Moira that she would be more useful “barking at the screen,” called her insignificant, and told her that if she could do something with her life she would move on. In another archived thread on July 17 you described boycotters as “worthless,” “petty and miserable,” “poor spiritually and financially,” and compared them to little bugs.

So I accept my factual mistakes about what you said to me, without qualification. But those corrections do not change the narrower point I originally wanted to make: I do not think those insults strengthen the evidence for Kim Soo Hyun. You are free not to retract them, and I am free to say I think they weaken an otherwise evidence-based position.

We actually agree on the important part of the case far more than we disagree. My disagreement with you is about method, not about pretending the months of abuse directed at KSH and his supporters never happened.

I understand what you mean, but I think the Jim Carrey comparison actually shows why these situations are very different.

Cathriona White and Jim Carrey had reportedly rekindled their on-and-off relationship in 2015 and separated only shortly before her death. He was therefore part of her immediate emotional life at the time. Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Sae Ron, by the acknowledged timeline, had ended their relationship around 2020 — more than four years before her death. By late 2024 and early 2025, another former boyfriend described himself as deeply involved in her life, and she had also reportedly married another man in January 2025. That same ex-boyfriend described several self-harm crises during this later period and explicitly said he did not believe her death was connected to Kim Soo Hyun. His interpretation is not a police finding, but the chronology matters. Why should an ex from four years earlier automatically take precedence over the people actually involved in her romantic and personal life at the time?

There is also a Korean entertainment context that I think gets lost when this is viewed entirely through an American celebrity lens. Kim Sae Ron's career collapse began after her 2022 DUI, long after she and Kim Soo Hyun had broken up. She crashed into a transformer while her blood-alcohol level was later reported around 0.2%, caused a power outage affecting dozens of businesses, lost roles, was placed on KBS's restricted-appearance list and faced an extremely hostile public response. Contemporary Korean reporting was already saying that DUI had become one of the offences Korean audiences were least willing to forgive celebrities for. That cancellation was not something Kim Soo Hyun personally created.

Gold Medalist was actually representing her when the DUI happened. The agency apologized publicly, said it would work with her to compensate those harmed and continued dealing with the consequences. Her contract ended in December 2022 and was not renewed after the scandal had already destroyed much of her commercial viability. Again, people can criticize the company, but this is very different from the idea that Kim Soo Hyun personally decided, “she made a mistake, so I will destroy her career.”

And Korean celebrity culture makes his public response different from Carrey's for another reason. By March 2025, Kim Sae Ron's death had already been transformed into a legal accusation that Kim Soo Hyun had groomed her, dated her as a minor and caused her death through debt pressure. Anything emotional he said about their former relationship could immediately be dissected as an admission against him. His lawyers therefore had to answer specific allegations rather than conduct a memorial interview. That is not necessarily coldness; it is what happens when a deceased ex suddenly becomes the central evidence in an active legal and reputational battle.

I also don't think it is accurate to say he behaved as though she never existed. At his March 31 press conference he acknowledged that they had been a couple, described them essentially as an ordinary couple outside their celebrity lives, apologized for the distress surrounding the situation, and said it pained him that the deceased could not rest peacefully. He also admitted that some of his earlier decisions had been cowardly because he had been trying to protect his career. That may not be the tribute you would personally have wanted, but it is not erasing her existence either.

What bothers me more about “he failed her” is that it quietly assigns an ex-boyfriend a permanent duty toward her while minimizing everyone and everything that actually surrounded her later life. Her own attorney said money she had earned had gone toward her parents' business and family living expenses. She then faced the DUI liabilities, career collapse, cyberbullying and later complicated relationships. Korean reporting after her death specifically criticized the country's brutal celebrity-cancellation culture for continuing to punish her long after the DUI.

Could Kim Soo Hyun privately think, Should I have done more? Should I have called her? Could something have changed? Why did this happen? Of course he could. Most people would probably torture themselves with questions like that after someone they once loved died. But that is very different from us deciding for him that he failed her.

They had broken up. She had moved on to other relationships. He had moved on too. An ex does not automatically outrank a current boyfriend, spouse, family, friends or the wider support system simply because he is the most famous person she once dated.

And that, to me, is the problem with the way this story keeps getting told: because Kim Soo Hyun is famous, every road is made to lead back to him, even when the documented problems in Kim Sae Ron's life continued for years after he was no longer part of it.

“Some of the K-pop idols are really young” is not an argument. It is an insinuation that their mere presence around Kim Soo Hyun somehow places them in danger.

The allegation that he had an inappropriate relationship with Kim Sae Ron while she was a minor was actually investigated. On July 29, Seoul Seongdong Police decided not to refer him for prosecution because there was insufficient objective evidence. Investigators also examined disputed material that had been circulated as proof.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260729008600315

So unless you have evidence that Kim Soo Hyun targets underage idols, mentioning their ages serves no purpose except to recycle the “predator” narrative without having to prove it. Young performers attending the same televised awards ceremony as a 38-year-old actor are not automatically victims waiting to happen. If simply standing near younger colleagues is supposed to be suspicious now, then practically every senior actor, presenter, producer and executive at an entertainment awards show would qualify.

You are free to dislike him. But implying that young idols need protection from him after the underage allegation failed to produce sufficient evidence for prosecution is not concern for minors. It is just another accusation disguised as a worried comment.

Don’t worry, nobody is going to miss one viewer who still prefers old accusations over what the investigation actually found.

You are completely free not to watch him. Nobody owes Kim Soo Hyun support. But if your decision is still based on the idea that he was proven to have dated or abused Kim Sae Ron as a minor, then you are choosing a narrative that the July 29 police investigation did not substantiate sufficiently for prosecution.

At this point, “oh well, I won’t watch” is not exactly a dramatic loss. The more interesting question is why some people are so determined to keep the original story unchanged even after the evidence moved on.

I did read your comment, and I think the disagreement is actually quite specific. You understood my original sentence as me arriving after the worst of the fighting and telling KSH supporters, “Look how right I am and how badly you are behaving.” That was not my intention.

I am fully aware that people defending Kim Soo Hyun have spent months being called pedophile supporters, rape apologists, idiots, misogynists and worse, while some critics have literally wished death on him and on his supporters. I have been reading and answering those comments too. I am not pretending both sides behaved equally, nor am I asking you to treat somebody politely while they are calling you a pedophile supporter.

What I was criticizing was much narrower: specific replies such as “r3tard3d,” “smooth brain,” “your head is just for decoration,” or using suicide as a taunt. I named you because you wrote some of those comments. I named @etoks21 for the suicide remarks. That is evidence, not a general lecture about “you/we.”

You say these people have demonstrated what they are and you have no reason to have a normal conversation with trolls. Fine. You do not owe anyone a long, educational conversation. Block them, report them, tell them their argument is unsupported, expose the contradiction, or simply refuse to engage. My point is only that an ableist slur does not become more accurate because the person on the receiving end behaved horribly first.

And this matters to me precisely because our strongest argument in this case has always been: look at the evidence instead of the abuse. We have police findings, forensic issues, court developments, financial records and documented contradictions. That is a much stronger position than competing over who can insult whom harder.

So I accept your correction about “again.” But I don't withdraw the substance of what I said. I was not judging all KSH supporters, and I was not denying what was done to you first. I was identifying specific behavior by specific people and saying that I don't think we need it to defend a case that already has evidence on its side.

Fair correction on this point: if this is our first direct interaction, then my use of “again” was wrong. I meant that the argument itself was addressing something I had not said, not that you personally had done it to me before. I should have worded that better.

I’ll start with one point where I agree with you: @Learner did not need to call people “brain dead.” I have already criticized KSH supporters for using that kind of language, and I’m not going to change that standard because I happen to agree with the rest of someone’s argument. But your response then demonstrates exactly why evidence matters.

A whistleblower is not simply anybody who publicly calls another person a rapist or sex predator. A whistleblower normally reports specific misconduct or evidence to people capable of investigating it. Saying “rape is difficult to prove, therefore people should be able to call someone a rapist without evidence” is a completely different proposition. Even if conviction rates are low in some jurisdictions, that does not logically mean every accusation is true or that evidence stops mattering for a particular accused person.

In Kim Soo Hyun’s case, this was not merely “the court couldn't prove it.” The allegation that he had an inappropriate relationship with Kim Sae Ron while she was a minor was investigated by Seoul Seongdong Police. On July 29, 2026, police decided not to refer him for prosecution because objective evidence was insufficient. Yonhap specifically reported that investigators considered the disputed recording suspicious for manipulation and examined circumstances including forensic results from Kim Sae Ron’s phone.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260729008600315

You say there are “photos and letters indicating a relationship.” They demonstrate that the two knew each other and communicated. That was never the same question as whether he was romantically or sexually involved with her as a minor. A photograph or military letter does not acquire evidence of sexual conduct simply because four years later two adults dated. That is exactly the distinction investigators had to examine. Then you call her death on his birthday “the most damning evidence.” No. It is the most emotionally powerful fact for you. Those are not the same thing. Kim Sae Ron was found dead on his birthday; we do not have authenticated evidence from her explaining that she chose the date because of Kim Soo Hyun or intended it as an accusation against him. Saying “I don't believe in coincidences” is literally substituting personal belief for evidence.

The Sulli argument is even more problematic. Sulli’s family raised legitimate questions in 2025 about the filming of Real, particularly regarding her nude scenes. Gold Medalist disputed their account and stated that nudity had been included in the script, explanatory materials and contract, and disputed the claim that Kim Soo Hyun personally engineered what happened on set. There has been no judicial or investigative finding that Kim Soo Hyun sexually exploited Sulli. You can discuss the controversy. You cannot quietly convert a disputed production controversy into another proven sex offence.
https://www.soompi.com/article/1733400wpp/sullis-family-requests-clarification-from-kim-soo-hyun-and-director-lee-sa-rang-regarding-explicit-scenes-in-film-real
https://www.soompi.com/article/1734540wpp/kim-soo-hyuns-agency-responds-to-controversy-over-film-real-and-sullis-explicit-scenes

And frankly, “there are two dead women, therefore there is a pattern” is exactly the kind of reasoning I object to. Two women being dead does not make the same man responsible for both deaths. Sulli died in 2019 after years of very publicly documented cyberbullying and personal struggles. Kim Sae Ron died in 2025 after the DUI, career collapse, enormous financial problems, family pressures and later relationships. Neither woman should be turned into a rhetorical corpse used to make an accusation against somebody else sound more sinister.

You can judge Kim Soo Hyun’s behavior. You can think dating a much younger adult was morally wrong. You can think he should have supported Kim Sae Ron differently after their breakup. Those are opinions I can discuss with you. But you repeatedly move from “I think his behavior was wrong” to “sex predator,” “abuse,” “exploitation,” “rape,” and “evil”, then say evidence is unnecessary because crimes sometimes go unpunished. That is not putting “2+2 together.” It is starting with the answer you want and treating every ambiguous fact as confirmation.

And bringing Epstein or whoever happens to be running another country into it changes absolutely nothing about the evidence in this Korean case. Other powerful men committing crimes does not prove Kim Soo Hyun committed one.

So yes, law and facts still matter. They matter especially when the accusation is rape, pedophilia or sexual predation. Otherwise anyone can destroy anyone simply by saying, “I don't believe in coincidences, therefore I know what happened.” That is precisely the mentality that made this case so destructive in the first place.

You are again arguing against something I did not say. I never said that you and the people who actually researched this case were responsible for the death wishes, “pedo supporter” accusations and other abuse that has been thrown at KSH supporters for months. I know perfectly well that much of that came first, and I have spent months answering it myself.

But since you seem to think I mentioned you without evidence, let’s be very precise about what I was referring to. In this article alone, you wrote that another user’s “head is just for decoration,” told them to “develop r smooth brain,” repeatedly suggested “coloring books” because you said people were incapable of reading, called people “brainleßß fools,” and then explicitly wrote: “My argument for u is that u are r3tard3d.” You also wrote “U should use some brains. Oh, wait, r head is just for decoration,” and “Haters, r daddy is in sh!t,” followed again by the coloring-book mockery. Those are your words, not my interpretation of them.

And this pattern did not start today. In earlier articles you told one critic they would be more useful “barking at the screen,” told another that if they had something meaningful to do with their life they would move on, called people “worthless,” “petty,” “miserable,” and “poor both spiritually and financially,” and repeatedly reduced critics to people who cannot read or think for themselves.

So when I said some KSH supporters were crossing the line into personal abuse, I was not inventing a vague accusation against “us.” I was talking about specific comments from specific users, including you. If I wanted to report them to MDL, I would have concrete examples for Offensive/Harassing behavior, and in some cases repeated near-identical insults could also reasonably be reported as spam/repetitive harassment. I would not need to manufacture anything; the comments are already public.

Now, does that mean I think you are equivalent to the people calling Kim Soo Hyun a rapist, pedophile, murderer or wishing death on him? No. I never said that, and I do not think it. Those are much more serious accusations, and I have been fighting them precisely because they are unsupported and destructive. But “they were worse first” is not a justification for us becoming abusive in return.

You also say it is not my place to tell people what “energy” to throw back. In a public discussion, it is absolutely my place to say what standards I think we should defend, just as it is your place to disagree. I am not your moderator, and I am not pretending to be. But I am also not going to endorse ableist slurs, suicide jokes or personal degradation just because they come from someone defending the same person I defend.

And the irony is that you already know how to argue without any of that. In other threads, you have asked people for sources, challenged financial claims, discussed the debt issue, and thanked someone for having a decent dialogue despite disagreeing with you. That version of your argument is much stronger than “r3tard3d” and “smooth brain.”

So no, I am not appearing after the “waters are calm” to tell everyone how morally superior I am. I am saying something much simpler: if our entire position is that facts, evidence and due process matter, then our own behavior should reflect that. Otherwise people can dismiss everything we say as just another fandom war.

And yes, from now on I will name the specific supporters I am criticizing when I make that point. That is fair. But I am not withdrawing the point itself.

You are asking people to organize, contact Netflix, Disney, iQIYI and other companies, and try to damage someone's career because you personally continue to believe allegations that the authorities investigated and did not substantiate sufficiently for prosecution.

So let me reverse your logic for a moment. How would you react if I told every Kim Soo Hyun supporter to identify you, find your employer, send them screenshots of your comments calling a man a rapist/pedophile or comparing his supporters with people on the Epstein list, and demand that you lose your job for cyberharassment?

I suspect you would suddenly have a great deal to say about harassment, privacy, proportionality and people's right to earn a living.

That is precisely why I am not going to do that to you.

I will report comments through the platform when I believe they violate its rules, preserve evidence when someone repeatedly presents serious accusations as facts, and leave actual legal questions to lawyers and competent authorities. I do not need to organize a mob against somebody's livelihood to prove that mob justice is wrong.

And hiding behind a username does not make an accusation more credible. You are entitled to use a pseudonym online, but anonymity is not evidence and it is not necessarily permanent if a court lawfully orders identifying information in a genuine legal proceeding. What matters here is simpler: if you are publicly calling someone a rapist, pedophile or murderer, you should be able to substantiate the factual allegation you are making.

I post under my own identity because I am prepared to stand behind what I write. More importantly, I publish the sources that led me to my conclusions and I correct myself when better evidence appears. I am not defending a “pedocriminal.” I am defending the principle that an accusation has to be proven before we destroy somebody's career over it.

Kim Soo Hyun's alleged underage relationship was investigated. Police did not refer him for prosecution because the objective evidence was insufficient. Meanwhile, Kim Se-ui—the person who helped disseminate those accusations—is detained and indicted, with his guilt still to be determined by the court. Those are facts. You can dislike Kim Soo Hyun despite them. You cannot make “rapist” become a fact simply because you want companies to punish him.

If you genuinely believe your case is strong, then use evidence. Calling for corporations to punish somebody while simultaneously comparing anyone who disagrees with you to Epstein associates does not demonstrate confidence in your evidence. It demonstrates why evidence matters in the first place.

My position is clear: I could imitate your mob logic. I choose not to, because I oppose that logic.