The side of actor Kim Soo-hyun (37), who is in a legal dispute with the bereaved family of the late Kim Sae-ron, released part of a letter he sent to his girlfriend during his military service. He also said he "never dated even a single day" with Kim Sae-ron (25) during her lifetime when she was a minor.
Attorney Go Sang-rok, Kim Soo-hyun's legal representative, posted parts of the letter and more on his social networking service (SNS) account and blog on the 30th, writing, "(Kim Soo-hyun) served in a front-line DMZ reconnaissance unit from Oct. 2017, when he enlisted, until Jul. 2019," and "Throughout his time in the military, he called his girlfriend whenever he had a moment and talked, and he wrote down his feelings about her every day. The diary, which began right after his unit assignment on Jan. 2, 2018, became letters sharing daily life and conveying his feelings to his girlfriend starting in the spring of that year, and by the spring of 2019, just before discharge, about 150 diary-style letters remained."
He continued, "Amid public attention, he always had to be careful, and he had to prepare for the risk of loss or theft even for writings he would not send by mail, and as a result, he could not write his girlfriend's real name for a long time," adding, "Instead, he would take the collected writings out with him every leave and show them directly to his girlfriend, who would then handwrite replies on them as a way of exchanging."
Attorney Go argued that Kim Soo-hyun showed a stark contrast in tone between the letters he sent to his girlfriend and those to Kim Sae-ron. He said, "In the letters actually sent to his girlfriend, he wrote, 'I love you as always, today as well,' but in the letters to the deceased, you cannot find the word love anywhere."
The released letters include expressions such as "To the moon, to the stars, to the rain, to the snow, in the whole forest, in that wind, in every landscape, even in this cold, every hour my day is you," and "Because I am a problematic soldier under watch, I can't write your name, but I really want to. I love you, I do."
Attorney Go said, "Gaseyeon deliberately placed this letter side by side with a postcard delivered during the dating period and excerpted and distorted only parts of the content to make it look as if he expressed romantic interest toward the deceased," explaining, "In the full context, this letter is nothing more than a writing conveying the small emotions and resolutions felt that day during military life." He also emphasized, "(Kim Soo-hyun) used a nickname in each letter instead of the celebrity's real name due to his cautious personality. It was not a special relationship."
He went on, "As the investigation is being prolonged due to Gaseyeon's continued additional offenses, to restore the damaged reputation and correct the distorted facts, I wrote this post based on results that carefully verified and checked facts confirmed through his agency and objective materials," and argued, "The claim that (Kim Soo-hyun) maintained a romantic relationship for six years starting when the deceased was in middle school, a child, and continued a perverse form of pedophilia has no factual basis whatsoever and is false."
The YouTube channel Gaseyeon has, since March, cited the bereaved family's position to claim that Kim Sae-ron had been dating Kim Soo-hyun for six years since she was 15. In response, Kim Soo-hyun acknowledged dating the deceased but countered that he had never dated her when she was a minor, and he also raised suspicions that the KakaoTalk messages from 2016 and 2018 disclosed by the bereaved family were fabricated.
Kim Soo-hyun filed civil and criminal suits, including a 12 billion won damages claim, against the bereaved family and Gaseyeon operator Kim Se-eui, and filed complaints and accusations on charges including defamation under the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection.