A lawyer for actor Kim Soo-hyun has mounted a full rebuttal regarding the 'relationship with a minor' allegations raised by the family of the late Kim Sae-ron.
On the 29th, Kim Soo-hyun's legal representative, attorney Go Sang-rok of law firm Pill, said on his YouTube channel "Jin-gyeok-ui GoByeon" that the claim that the actor maintained a romantic relationship with the deceased for six years beginning when she was a middle school student and engaged in perverse pedophilic behavior is entirely baseless and false.
Attorney Go Sang-rok said of the skinship photos of the late Kim Sae-ron and Kim Soo-hyun released by the family, "They are all photos taken when the deceased was an adult, between December 2019 (first year of university) and the following spring, when the two were actually dating," adding, "There are numerous photos concentrated in the actual dating period. If they had dated for six years since middle school, it is hard to explain why not a single photo from that long period exists other than these from that time. The postcard the actor sent on Nov. 1, 2019, was also written when the deceased was already an adult."
He continued, "The actor had a real girlfriend from 2016 until spring 2019. During his military service, he called his lover whenever he had time and wrote daily about his feelings for her. He left about 150 diary-style letters up until spring 2019, just before his discharge," and released parts of the diary. He also explained that the letter sent to the late Kim Sae-ron during his military service "is closer to an essay recording daily life, resolve during service, and plans and pledges after discharge than a letter between lovers," adding, "Whenever he had time, he wrote letters to acquaintances active outside to convey impressions of military life and his determination to return after discharge and to reaffirm his sense of belonging as an actor, and the single public letter sent to the deceased was part of that."
He said, "The issue began with a draft false statement that remained in a KakaoTalk conversation the deceased sent to an acquaintance on March 25, 2024. At the time the drama 'drama' was very popular, and the photo the deceased uploaded to social media and then immediately deleted — showing the deceased and the actor with their faces close together — was found upon fact-checking to have been taken in late February 2020 when the deceased was a second-year university student. However, the draft statement, which appears to have been prepared with someone's help, included a serious and clear falsehood asserting that the photo was 'taken in 2016 (first year of high school).' That photo was cited as the sole basis for the false claim that 'the deceased dated the actor from third year of middle school through third year of university,'" noting, "Anyone can make statements that differ from the facts in certain situations, and the deceased or those who helped her may have had motives or reasons at the time."
He added, "The draft statement contained many obvious errors. For example, although the 12-year age difference between the deceased and the actor is an objective and unchanging fact, the draft states, 'I was 16 years old and the other person was 30,' creating a contradictory statement that depicts the actor as maliciously as possible. Also, the photo the deceased uploaded and deleted on social media was taken when she was about to be a second-year university student (Feb. 2020), and it is difficult to confuse that with the deceased's childhood or adolescent appearance."
He said, "The current harm the actor is suffering stems from organized and malicious cybercrime. Cyber wrecker crimes are systematized to a degree comparable to organized violence in the digital age and cause severe social harm," adding, "Fake news is not content but a crime. Now society as a whole must confront and firmly control cyber organized violence."
Meanwhile, the late Kim Sae-ron died on Feb. 16. She was 24. Afterwards, the family claimed the deceased had dated Kim Soo-hyun for six years beginning when she was a middle school student. Kim Soo-hyun's side acknowledged the relationship with the deceased but disputed that the dating period began earlier, saying it lasted from the summer of 2019, when the deceased was an adult, until the following spring. They have filed a criminal complaint against the deceased's family for defamation and a civil suit seeking damages totaling 12 billion won.
[Photo] SNS, OSEN DB
[OSEN]