Broadcaster Seo Yu-ri responded to an appeal from her ex-husband, producer Choi Byung-gil.
On the 26th, Seo Yu-ri uploaded a lengthy post titled "Reply to Mr. Choi Byung-gil" on her social account.
The post is presumed to have been written by Seo Yu-ri's current boyfriend. Seo Yu-ri recently revealed she is dating a man seven years her junior who works in the legal profession.
Meanwhile, Seo Yu-ri's boyfriend pointed out Choi Byung-gil's contradictory claim, saying, "You asserted with confidence that you have never once reversed your intention to pay the settlement money. But expressing an intention and fulfilling a promise are entirely different matters," and "The picture of someone who ultimately disappeared from the third meeting where you agreed to sit down again, yet boasts consistency of intention, does not read naturally from any angle."
He criticized, "You wrote that you repeatedly asked the creditor side to contact you through a lawyer, and because that request was violated, you were compelled to block contact. Is the person who should be fulfilling a promise entitled to dictate the form of contact to the person waiting for that promise? The party who should politely propose the repayment schedule, repayment method and means of contact is the debtor, and the party who decides whether to accept that proposal is the creditor. Attempting to justify the blocking while reversing this order is an excuse that persuades no one except the debtor who is sending it."
Regarding the explanation, "I can't provide it only because I lack the ability to generate income," he said, "The everyday details the debtor has personally refined and released to the world during the same period, the scenes of working on new songs, the amount of time spent with equipment, and the consistency with which those works have been repeatedly made public do not easily sit in the same place as the one line in this post claiming not even to be able to afford communication costs," and added, "What is required of someone entering into an agreement is to propose a repayment plan in writing within the range they can bear and to faithfully carry it out step by step. If you have not shown even that one step a single time, saying you lack ability is nothing more than another name for avoiding a promise."
He continued, "To borrow the expression the debtor often used in the text, repay like a man. Image and reputation are not restored by polished public sentences but are restored only by the attitude of fulfilling what you promised as you promised," and said, "You cut off contact, left the seat of the promise empty, polished emotions with public sentences and requested silence instead of support. In the meantime, new songs have been refined, the results of work have repeatedly been released to the world, and the scenes of daily life have been neatly wrapped up and disclosed to the public. While your time passes in that way, where do you think the time of the person who has been waiting for your promise went?"
He said, "The person you are now ignoring about the promise was once someone of yours. They sat at the same table under the same roof and shared the closest place in life for a period of time. A promise with someone who was once family, not just anyone in the world," and emphasized, "Even debts to strangers should rightly be repaid as a matter of human duty, so have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror and seen this act of ignoring a promise to someone who was once closest to you? Reopening the contact you have closed and returning to the seat you left empty is not something enforced by the weight of the law but a duty that someone who was once a family member must finally allow themselves to perform."
Meanwhile, Seo Yu-ri married in 2019 but divorced in June 2024. The two had financial conflicts from the divorce process, and after the divorce Seo Yu-ri claimed that Choi Byung-gil repaid only 300 million won of the 600 million won he borrowed from her and demanded payment of the remaining amount. She also said she took on debt of up to 2 billion won during the divorce process and has repaid about 1.3 billion won.
Their financial issues have continued without resolution, with persistent arguments. Recently, Seo Yu-ri even made the divorce agreement public and repeatedly urged Choi Byung-gil to pay the money previously agreed upon. In the agreement, Choi Byung-gil agreed to pay Seo Yu-ri a total of 320,300,000 won by Dec. 31, 2024, and promised that if payment was delayed, interest of 12% per year would be added from Jan. 1, 2025. The agreement also contained a clause allowing Seo Yu-ri to claim payment of the sum through separate litigation if Choi Byung-gil violated the payment.
Meanwhile, on the 20th, Choi Byung-gil posted what he called "a letter to Seo Yu-ri," saying, "I have never once reversed my intention to pay after writing the agreement. It is just that I still cannot provide it because I lack the ability to generate income. The reason I blocked contact was that I repeatedly asked that you contact me through a lawyer but you violated that. I currently cannot even afford communication fees so my phone was disconnected, but the number is still the same, and even if the number changes I have no intention of disappearing. Please ease the negativity toward me a bit and, even if not cheering me on, could you at least leave me alone so this incapable person can get back on his feet in the market and pay the settlement?"
Below is Seo Yu-ri's full post.
Reply to Mr. Choi Byung-gil
Hello, I am the person next to Seo Yu-ri. I have read the post you posted five days ago many times. It is not difficult to read what intent each line was placed with without prying into the subtext.
First, I want to make one thing clear. This post is not to vent emotion but to correct the facts. The more your post is polished into definitive sentences, the more the empty space where truth should be between those sentences stands out clearly.
You asserted with confidence that you have never once reversed your intention to pay the settlement money. But expressing an intention and fulfilling a promise are entirely different matters.
There was already one agreement reached between you and the creditor side, and thereafter a second, newly refined agreement also clearly exists.
In addition, you also directly promised the creditor side that you would not enter into certain legal procedures, and that fact also clearly exists. I will not write at length about how that promise was handled afterward.
But I want to note one thing. The picture of someone who ultimately disappeared from the third meeting where you agreed to sit down again yet boasts consistency of intention does not read naturally from any angle.
What you have consistently maintained is not the intention to repay but the very act of stepping back from the seat of the promise, and I believe readers of this post will judge that for themselves without my lengthy comment.
The debtor wrote that because you repeatedly asked the creditor side to contact you through a lawyer and that request was violated, you were compelled to block contact. At that passage, this post is most inverted in terms of cause and effect, so I cannot help but point it out.
The form of contact through a lawyer only gains meaning from the point when the debtor formally appoints a representative and a notice of engagement in the name of that office reaches the creditor side.
In a situation where neither the fact of appointing a representative nor the arrival of a notice of engagement exists, the debtor unilaterally designating a contact route for the creditor and justifying blocking because that designation was not followed is nothing more than an attempt by the debtor to exercise powers not granted to them.
Is the person who should be fulfilling a promise entitled to dictate the form of contact to the person waiting for that promise? On the contrary, the reverse is the natural conclusion in this matter. The party who should politely propose the repayment schedule, repayment method and means of contact is the debtor, and the party who decides whether to accept that proposal is the creditor.
An attempt to construct the legitimacy of blocking after reversing this order will remain an excuse that persuades no one except the debtor who is sending it.
I want to ask one more thing. Which lawyer exactly are you referring to when you repeatedly name that lawyer? If you mean the debtor's own representative, a one-line reply stating the fact of the office's engagement and its name will immediately open the door to negotiation. If you mean the creditor-side channel, that channel has never been closed even for a day, so you can simply reply in writing at this moment.
Attempting to justify blocking by naming an ambiguous lawyer who corresponds to neither side only makes it clearer who was blocked and who disappeared from the seat of the promise.
When I reached the part where you explained, "I can't provide it only because I lack the ability to generate income," I honestly stopped and reread it for a long time. If someone unfamiliar with the debtor's everyday scenes that the debtor usually polishes read only this post, anyone would feel sorry for the debtor's circumstances.
However, the everyday details the debtor has personally refined and released to the world during the same period, the scenes of working on new songs, the amount of time spent with equipment, and the consistency with which those works have been repeatedly made public do not easily sit in the same place as the one line in this post claiming not even to be able to afford communication costs.
A person's self-reliance is not written in a bankbook balance but engraved in the trajectory of daily life, and that trajectory is a scene the debtor themself testifies to the world every day regardless of whether the creditor looks into it.
What is required of someone entering into an agreement is to propose a repayment plan in writing within the range they can bear and to faithfully carry it out step by step. If you have not shown even that one step a single time, saying you lack ability is nothing more than another name for avoiding a promise.
The plea you wrote in the final paragraph, asking that even if not cheering you on just leave you alone, read to me as the most shrewdly placed sentence in this post. The picture of someone who first disappeared from the seat of the promise asking the person who waited for the promise for silence does not read naturally from any angle.
The right to request silence is granted only to those who kept their promises, not to those who stood aside from the seat of the promise. To borrow the expression the debtor often used in the text, repay like a man. Image and reputation are not restored by polished public sentences but are restored only by the attitude of fulfilling what you promised as you promised.
There are people in the world who bear debts and nevertheless uphold human duty. When their circumstances do not allow it, they politely inform the creditor of their situation as it is, and when they get even a small amount, they take that money and go to the creditor first. Faced with such people, the creditor bows their head. That is the natural flow of debt between people. Where do you stand now?
You have cut off contact, left the seat of the promise empty, polished emotions with public sentences and requested silence instead of support. In the meantime, new songs have been refined, the results of work have repeatedly been released to the world, and the scenes of daily life have been neatly wrapped up and disclosed to the public. While your time passes in that way, where do you think the time of the person who has been waiting for your promise went?
From the same position of a man, I ask one thing directly. A man's weight is not gained from visible daily details nor from the care of polished sentences. Only when someone takes responsibility for a promise they themselves made to the end do they become worthy before the name they bear.
Lastly, I will ask one thing and step back. The person you are now ignoring about the promise was once someone of yours. They sat at the same table under the same roof and shared the closest place in life for a period of time. It is a promise with someone who was once family, not anyone in the world.
Even debts to strangers should rightly be repaid as a matter of human duty, so have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror and seen this act of ignoring a promise to someone who was once closest to you? Stand facing that mirror once.
Reopening the contact you have closed and returning to the seat you left empty is not something enforced by the weight of the law but a duty that someone who was once a family member must finally allow themselves to perform. The promise you are now ignoring should be faced before any other debt in the world. Restoring the weight of a person in front of someone who was once the closest is not something done because someone tells you to do it but something you must do for yourself.
[Photo] Seo Yu-ri SNS
[OSEN]