"Culinary Class Wars2" chef Im Seong-keun expressed his feelings about the controversies that emerged after his recent admission of drunk driving.
Im Seong-keun met with OSEN on the afternoon of the 21st at an office in Sangam-dong, Mapo District, Seoul, and talked about his recent situation. He humbly said, "It's all my fault," and expressed his mixed feelings about being swept up in fierce public criticism after confessing to his past drunk-driving offenses.
In the recently popular Netflix original variety show Culinary Class Wars: cooking class wars (abbreviated Culinary Class Wars2), Im Seong-keun, who received huge love as a White Spoon, confessed to a drunk-driving record and instantly became a target of abuse. Even in programs that had finished filming, his segments were edited out, and offers from programs that were discussing his appearance were canceled, leading to a string of cutoffs. All of this was the aftermath of his confession to drunk driving.
Regarding this, Im Seong-keun said, "Including drunk driving, I have exactly six criminal records." He said, "There were four drunk-driving cases, one time I was caught riding a motorcycle without a license, and another time I got into an argument that escalated to a grab by the collar and became mutual assault, for which we each paid a fine of 300,000 won," he revealed.
However, he denied allegations that he had preemptively confessed to drunk driving before reporting or that he had downplayed it as three incidents. He said, "I'm not a professional broadcaster, and I was afraid of receiving an amount of attention through "Culinary Class Wars2" that I couldn't handle. The number of Instagram followers and YouTube channel subscribers grew so much it felt like it could become a big problem, and I felt heavily burdened. It wasn't simply good; it was good but at the same time frightening. While appearing on multiple broadcasts, I couldn't summon the courage during daytime shoots, and at night I would return and keep regretting it, so my life became ruined. I reached a point where I couldn't go on, so while shooting YouTube I told the production team," he said.
Im Seong-keun said, "I had no intention of deceiving or planning anything. While doing YouTube product placements, advertisements came flooding in and I was so scared that I thought, 'This can't go on.' So on the 12th I shot several YouTube videos and revealed things together. A YouTube producer naturally sat in and filmed. Relying on my imperfect memory, I spoke and that led to the claim that I had been caught for drunk driving three times since 10 years ago. That producer had a regional shoot, so on the evening of the 16th he scheduled the drunk-driving confession video to be published on the 18th, but on the 17th a news outlet called to investigate and I found that my drunk driving was from 15–16 years ago. Because it was about 30 years ago, my memory wasn't accurate. If I had planned to preemptively stage the video, would I have done it so sloppily? I want to say I had no such intent," he choked up.
He went on to say, "Whether it was once or 10 times, what does that matter? The fact that I drove drunk and that it was my fault does not change. I received short but excessive love, and to repay that time I plan to suspend broadcasting activities and focus on my main work in the food service industry," he appealed.
(Continued from interview ②)<
[Photo] Source: SNS.
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