Falhon Cyril

Hi everyone. I realised I had been a member of this group for a while without ever properly introducing myself, so I thought it was time. I write reviews mostly about BL dramas, although I also review other Asian dramas from time to time. My approach is probably a little different from simply asking whether a drama was “good” or “bad.” I try to explain why something worked for me or why it didn't: acting, chemistry, directing, editing, cinematography, writing, cultural context, production choices, psychology of the characters, and sometimes the history or social issues behind the story. I also like comparing adaptations with their novels, webtoons or previous versions when that helps explain what changed. The most important thing for me is independence. I usually form my opinion before reading other reviews because I don't want the majority reaction to decide what I am supposed to think. If everyone loves a drama and I find it mediocre, I will say so. If everyone is destroying a drama and I think they missed what it was trying to do, I will say that too. I would much rather have someone agree with me because we genuinely saw the same things than change my opinion just to fit whatever view is currently popular. That doesn't mean I think my interpretation is always correct. Quite the opposite. When something bothers me, I often research it before writing. Sometimes I discover that what looked unrealistic to me actually has a psychological, historical or cultural explanation, and I will change or nuance my original reaction accordingly. I think a review becomes much more interesting when it can say, “This was my reaction while watching, but after looking deeper, I understand what the writer may have been trying to show.”

I use the same principle when I write about actors or celebrity controversies. I am not interested in defending someone simply because I like them, or attacking someone because the internet has already decided they are guilty. I try to separate confirmed facts from rumours, opinion from evidence, and criticism of someone's work from judgment of their private life. Sometimes that means supporting someone who is being unfairly attacked; other times it means acknowledging uncomfortable facts about someone I otherwise like. Neutrality isn't about pretending both sides are always equally right. It is about trying to follow the evidence rather than the crowd.

My reviews are also very personal. I have been watching BL for a very long time, from the years when Japanese movies were among the few things available to us through today's huge international industry, so naturally I compare new productions with a lot of what came before. That does not make my opinion more important than anyone else's, but it does mean I often notice when something presented as new has already been done many times—or when a production genuinely pushes the genre somewhere different. These reviews take me quite a long time because I put a lot of myself into them. I am still learning how the MDL feed works, apparently much more slowly than I learned how to analyse dramas. 😅 So if you see one of my reviews and disagree with it, feel free to tell me why. I actually enjoy discussions much more when someone gives me another interpretation instead of simply saying “I loved it” or “I hated it.” And if our opinions happen to match, even better. At least I'll know neither of us had to follow the flock to get there.
https://mydramalist.com/profile/L.J.H/reviews
https://mydramalist.com/profile/L.J.H/comments

Side Note — Why Prince Vasin Became the Villain

Something else stayed with me after finishing The Edge of Horizon: Prince Vasin did not become the villain simply because he rejected his son's relationship with another man. His real tragedy was that he could not imagine himself without the power and status into which he had been born. After the 1932 revolution ended Siam's absolute monarchy, everyone in the royal family had to confront a world that no longer automatically placed them above ordinary people. The drama gives us several very different reactions to that loss of privilege. Patthamapriya and Thinnakon eventually try to adapt. They do not suddenly become ordinary people with ordinary histories, because they still carry their education, manners and knowledge with them, but they begin using what they have in a society that no longer exists primarily to serve them. Thinnakon becoming a teacher is particularly meaningful. The knowledge that once distinguished him as an educated prince becomes something he can give to other people. Instead of asking society to restore his old position, he finds a new place within that society. Patthamapriya's experience is sadder. She is already old when the world she understands disappears beneath her feet. Losing the security, environment and social structure that shaped almost her entire life affects her differently from Thinnakon, who still has the age and energy to build something new. The series does not pretend that adapting is painless. Change can be historically necessary while still being frightening and personally devastating to the people living through it.

Vasin cannot make that transition. What he loses is not merely a house, money or a title. He loses the certainty that his birth determines his importance. Instead of asking why so many ordinary people wanted the old system to change, he concentrates on the humiliation of no longer possessing the authority he believes belongs to him. He does not try to understand how common people lived under the hierarchy from which his family benefited. His response is to recover what was lost. That is what ultimately turns him into the antagonist. There is even a psychological logic behind it. Research on status loss shows that people who feel their position in a hierarchy is threatened can become particularly preoccupied with restoring that status, sometimes continuing to invest in a failing course of action because accepting the loss would also mean accepting a different position for themselves. That does not explain every political conflict, but it fits Vasin remarkably well. His greatest enemy is not really Phob, the revolution or even his son's sexuality. It is a world in which Prince Vasin is no longer automatically Prince Vasin in the way he understands that name.

And this is where Vasin and Prince Chattrathorn become much more alike than either of them would probably admit. They spend much of the drama fighting, judging and undermining one another, yet both believe their intelligence and birth should protect them from consequences. Chattrathorn thinks he is clever enough to manipulate situations and preserve his lifestyle, only to discover that other people can manipulate him just as easily. His money and arrogance do not make him politically intelligent. Vasin has more discipline and experience, but the underlying assumption is similar: both think they deserve to remain above the people around them. The irony is that they help create the very disasters they later resent. Vasin separates Phob and Thinnakon because he is obsessed with preserving class, lineage and reputation. In doing so, he pushes the two men toward opposite worlds and helps turn their personal conflict into something political. Chattrathorn, meanwhile, believes he can use people and money to protect his position, without noticing when someone else is using him for exactly the same reason. Both men believe they are controlling events until they discover that power built only on status is remarkably fragile once other people stop recognising that status.

Thinnakon learns the opposite lesson. He loses privilege but discovers usefulness. That distinction may be one of the most intelligent political ideas in the drama. Thinnakon does not become valuable because people still call him a prince. He becomes valuable because he can teach, contribute and use what he knows for people outside his own family. The old hierarchy told him that his value came from birth. The new world forces him to discover what value he can create himself. And perhaps this is why Vasin's opposition to Phob and Thinnakon's love is inseparable from his politics. Phob represents everything Vasin's worldview cannot comfortably accept. He is the son of a servant who becomes educated, enters the military, develops political agency and ultimately stands as an equal to a prince. If Thinnakon can love Phob as an equal, then one of the fundamental assumptions supporting Vasin's entire world collapses. Their romance is therefore threatening not only because they are two men, but because it ignores the hierarchy Vasin considers natural.

The drama's political message also feels surprisingly contemporary, although I would not reduce it to “all politicians are like Vasin.” It is broader than party politics. Power has always created the temptation to confuse a position with a personal right to that position. Wealth can do the same thing today that aristocratic birth once did: provide access, influence, education, connections and the ability to move through doors that remain closed to other people. Modern aristocracy does not necessarily require a title. It can be inherited wealth, political connections, corporate influence or simply enough money to buy proximity to decision-makers. The names and institutions change, but the danger remains similar whenever people at the top begin believing that preserving their own position is equivalent to preserving society itself. That is the difference between Vasin and Thinnakon. One asks, “How do I get my position back?”
The other eventually asks, “What can I do in the world that exists now?”
That may be why Thinnakon survives the fall of his old world while Vasin is consumed by it. Losing privilege does not destroy Thinnakon because privilege was never the only thing inside him. He still has knowledge, compassion, love and the ability to become useful to other people. Vasin has spent so long defining himself through hierarchy that when the hierarchy disappears, he has almost nothing left except the desire to restore it. And that, more than his title or even his opposition to Phob and Thinnakon, is what makes him the real villain of The Edge of Horizon.

Thank you 🤗. And if you want the full reasoning behind what I wrote, I have already gone through the police findings, the disputed evidence, the legal developments and the psychological side of the case in my longer explanatory comments. I wrote those for everyone rather than as replies to individual people, so it is probably easier to read them than for me to repeat the same arguments again here. You can find all of them through my comments page: https://mydramalist.com/profile/L.J.H/comments, including the longer discussions under this article: https://news.mydramalist.com/article/kim-soo-hyun-confirmed-as-presenter-for-2026-the-fact-music-awards

I also think Kim Sae Ron’s later private life is important context because it shows that her story after Kim Soo Hyun was more complicated than people often present it. She had other relationships, reportedly married another man in January 2025, and her own family said they had not known about that marriage. She also posted the old photo with Kim Soo Hyun in 2024, years after their relationship had ended, although none of us can know for certain what motivated her to do that. For me, those facts are simply another reason to be careful about reducing everything that happened later in her life, including her death, to one former relationship.

I don't really understand the Kim Seon Ho comparison because the chronology actually says the opposite of what you're suggesting. Kim Seon Ho returned to the stage about nine months after his controversy; Kim Soo Hyun has been away from Korean public activities for roughly a year and a half. And presenting an award at The Fact Music Awards is not the same thing as being immediately handed a new television drama. Nobody has to prove that “the public asked for him back” before he is allowed to work again; organizers, producers, advertisers and ultimately audiences decide whether they want to work with or watch an artist. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20220720009200315 and https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260828002200315

The more important difference is what happened to the accusations themselves. Kim Seon Ho apologized for his own conduct and said he had hurt his former partner through his “inconsiderate and careless behavior.” Kim Soo Hyun consistently denied dating Kim Sae Ron while she was a minor, and after the investigation police concluded that the underage-relationship allegation was false; police documents also found that KakaoTalk material and an audio recording presented as proof had been fabricated or manipulated. So what exactly is he supposed to do now—remain unemployed permanently because some members of the public are still uncomfortable with an accusation that the investigation did not substantiate? People are perfectly free not to watch him, support him or buy anything he advertises, but discomfort is not a sentence and public opinion is not a court judgment. 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 and https://news.sbs.co.kr/english/endPage.do?newsId=N1008680904

And “the public” is not one person with one opinion. Some overseas fans are currently campaigning against his awards appearances, while other fans welcomed his return in Indonesia and the TMA and AAA organizers have, so far, kept him on their schedules. That is what a real public looks like: disagreement, support, criticism and individual choice. If someone does not want to see Kim Soo Hyun again, that is completely their right; what they do not have is the right to turn their personal refusal to watch him into a rule that nobody else should be allowed to hire or watch him either. His career will ultimately be decided by whether enough viewers, producers, brands and industry professionals still want him there—not by whoever shouts “the public doesn't want him” the loudest.

I understand your distinction now, so I am not going to argue again that you presented the criminal-group classification as an established court finding. You have made clear that it is your professional hypothesis. But after checking the provision you now cite, Article 8(2) actually creates a more specific problem for that hypothesis. Article 8(2) of the Korean Criminal Procedure Act applies when a case originally within a single judge’s jurisdiction becomes a collegiate-panel case **because the indictment has been amended**; in that situation, the court must transfer it to the court with subject-matter jurisdiction. I have found no report, prosecution announcement or court information saying Kim Se-ui’s indictment was amended before the August 19 transfer. https://www.law.go.kr/lsInfoP.do?lsiSeq=288579&viewCls=lsRvsDocInfoR

What was publicly reported is a 재정합의 decision, and that has a different legal basis. Article 32(1)(1) of the Korean Court Organization Act expressly gives a district-court collegiate panel jurisdiction over “cases that the collegiate panel itself decides to judge,” without requiring a new aggravated charge or an amended indictment. Contemporary Korean reporting describes Kim Se-ui’s transfer in exactly those terms: a case normally assigned to a single judge can be taken by a collegiate panel because of its importance, complexity, significant social impact or need for specialized judgment. ChosunBiz explicitly says the change itself does not indicate a determination of guilt or innocence, while StarNews reports the same 재정합의 procedure and points to the unusually complex procedural history surrounding the case. So unless there is an amended indictment that has not been made public, Article 8(2) does not appear to explain this transfer; Article 32(1)(1) does. https://www.law.go.kr/LSW/lsLawLinkInfo.do?chrClsCd=010202&lsJoLnkSeq=900028279 and https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-society/2026/08/25/MX3ETHZ5K5APRJETXUU2XGDAB4/

I also agree with you on one narrow proposition: the existence of several suspects does not EXCLUDE a criminal-group charge. But that is very different from making it a likely explanation. Korean Criminal Act Article 30 already covers two or more people jointly committing an offense, while Articles 31 and 32 separately cover instigators and accessories; the Criminal Procedure Act itself even defines crimes jointly committed by several persons as “related cases.” Article 114 is something additional: the Supreme Court requires an organized association or group built around a common criminal purpose, with an operational structure and role allocation capable of repeatedly carrying out crimes. In Supreme Court Decision 2019Do16263, the Court found Article 114 satisfied because members acted through designated roles such as leader, team leader, field team and telephone counselors within a system designed to commit repeated fraud. Several suspects allegedly participating in related wrongdoing may therefore support accomplice or joint-principal theories, but it does not by itself supply the organizational element required by Article 114. https://law.go.kr/precInfoP.do?precSeq=211811 and https://www.law.go.kr/LSW/lsLinkCommonInfo.do?lsJoLnkSeq=900547891

The detention does not fill that gap either. Kim Se-ui’s continued custody is certainly a serious procedural fact, and I have never disputed that: a judge issued the warrant on flight-risk and evidence-destruction grounds, and another court rejected his detention review. But Korean Criminal Procedure Act Articles 70 and 201 require substantial grounds for suspicion plus a detention ground; they do not require the court at that stage to determine which eventual legal classification prosecutors will prove at trial. Saying that the “charges in the indictment are real” is correct if “real” means that he has genuinely been indicted on those charges; it is not evidence that an uncharged Article 114 theory is already embedded in them. Likewise, I have not found reliable reporting confirming your statement that his case was formally severed specifically because detention was urgent while the other suspects did not require detention, so I would need the procedural document or source for that before treating it as established.

So I think we finally have a very narrow disagreement rather than two people arguing past one another. I accept that Article 114 is theoretically POSSIBLE if later evidence establishes an organized group formed for the purpose of committing qualifying crimes; several of the offenses involved have statutory maxima high enough for Article 114 to be legally conceivable. What I do not see is evidence that the August 19 transfer itself points toward that classification, particularly because the provision you cite, Article 8(2), requires an indictment amendment that has not been reported, while Article 32(1)(1) already explains the exact 재정합의 procedure that the court used. If an amended indictment or later charging document introduces Article 114 or facts establishing that organizational structure, then your prediction will have been remarkably accurate. Until then, however, “not excluded” is not the same thing as “indicated by the transfer.”

I went back and reread what you actually wrote, and on part of this criticism you are right. You explicitly said that your interpretation of the transfer was a prediction and that “whether that view proves correct remains to be seen,” so I should not have answered as though you had claimed the court had already made that finding. Likewise, when you called MIDO a precedent, you have now clarified that you meant the first relevant decision capable of influencing similar cases, not binding precedent in the technical common-law sense. I accept both corrections, and I am not interested in defending a wording of mine that overstated your position. The legal-assistance agreement is also no longer a point of disagreement between us: I already accepted that the later criminal complaint cannot simply be retroactively treated as part of the original mandate without contractual language establishing that scope.

There is, however, one substantive legal point where I still disagree with your inference: the criminal-group theory. Korean Criminal Act Article 114 does not turn several alleged participants into a “criminal group.” The Supreme Court has held that a criminal group requires a continuing association formed around a common criminal purpose and an organizational structure capable of repeatedly carrying out crimes through assigned roles; in Supreme Court Decision 2019Do16263, the Court specifically looked for role allocation and an organized system enabling repeated offending. So the fact that an indictment describes several people participating in related acts may justify investigating joint liability, aiding, conspiracy-type conduct or individual accomplice responsibility, but it does not by itself establish—or strongly imply—the Article 114 structure. None of the publicly reported charges in Kim Se-ui’s indictment currently includes Article 114; the reported charges concern false-information defamation, sexual-image distribution, stalking, intimidation and attempted coercion.

The transfer to three judges does not resolve that question either. Article 32(1)(1) of the Korean Court Organization Act expressly allows a district court collegiate panel to hear a case simply because the collegiate panel decides that it should, independently of any criminal-group charge. Article 32(1)(3) separately gives collegiate panels mandatory first-instance jurisdiction over offenses carrying death, life imprisonment or a statutory minimum imprisonment of at least one year, subject to specified exceptions. In other words, there are multiple procedural routes to a three-judge panel, and a discretionary 재정합의 transfer cannot be reverse-engineered into evidence that prosecutors or the court are moving toward Article 114. If Article 114 is later charged, or evidence emerges of a continuing organized structure with defined roles and a shared criminal purpose, then your prediction will have acquired concrete legal support; at present, the transfer itself does not provide that support.

The detention point is similar but narrower than I previously made it sound. Criminal Procedure Act Articles 70 and 201 require substantial grounds for suspicion plus a lawful detention ground such as flight or destruction of evidence, and Article 214-2 permits judicial review of whether that detention remains justified. So the warrant and failed detention challenge unquestionably tell us something important: courts found the legal threshold for continued custody satisfied at that stage. What they do not tell us is which disputed factual allegations the eventual trial court will accept, and if by “direction of the case” you mean only that the prosecution’s case had become procedurally serious enough to sustain detention and indictment, then I have no disagreement with you. My objection would arise only if that procedural decision were used as corroboration that a particular contested allegation in the indictment was substantively true.

So after going back to your actual words, I think our disagreement is considerably narrower than my previous response suggested. I withdraw the corrections concerning you supposedly claiming a verdict, treating MIDO as binding precedent, or retroactively incorporating the later complaint into the original agreement; those do not fairly represent the position you have clarified. What remains is one legal inference: I do not think the publicly reported indictment plus the existence of additional participants and the later three-judge transfer presently support a likely “criminal group” classification under Article 114. Korean Supreme Court doctrine requires substantially more than multiple people participating in related conduct. If later charging documents establish that organizational element, I will change my assessment accordingly.

You called my last comment “salty,” and yes, this subject does make me angry, because I know personally what grooming looks like from the inside. I was groomed as a child by someone in my own family: my aunt made herself the safe older person I could trust, became especially close when I needed someone, gave me gifts, took me places away from my family, gradually isolated me after my father died, and then at 16 placed me in a situation with an adult friend where I was sexually exploited. Later, when I received my inheritance, that same relationship of trust was used to get money and things from me, and when there was nothing left to give, the affection disappeared and blame replaced it. THAT is why I react strongly when “grooming” gets reduced to “an older person dated someone younger.” The validated Sexual Grooming Model developed by Winters, Jeglic and Kaylor describes exactly this kind of behavioral process: selecting vulnerability, gaining access and isolation, developing trust, progressively crossing boundaries, and maintaining control around the abuse. An age difference can be a factor worth examining, but an age difference is not that behavioral process. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33006502/ . I also think you have psychologically aged Kim Soo Hyun far beyond what 31 actually is. Look at men who are 31 in Korea today: NCT's Taeyong, BTOB's Yook Sungjae, Hwang Minhyun and Ong Seong-wu were all born in 1995 and are 31 in 2026. I don't look at any of those men and imagine some middle-aged patriarch with decades of romantic wisdom who is incapable of making emotionally stupid decisions. More importantly, real cases show how meaningless that assumption is: Super Junior's Kangin was exactly 31 when a Korean court convicted him after he drove drunk, crashed into a streetlight and left the scene, despite already having a previous DUI; Park Yoochun was only 32 when he was convicted of methamphetamine use after first publicly denying the allegations. Those were vastly worse decisions than dating another adult, but they demonstrate something very simple: turning 30 does not suddenly make someone's judgment perfect, eliminate impulsivity or give them supernatural foresight about the consequences of their choices. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20160907003500315 and https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20190702002151315 As developmental psychologist Clare Mehta puts it: “You don’t wake up … at 30 and you’re like, ‘I am now an established adult.’ That’s not how it happens.” Being 31 made Kim Soo Hyun an adult. It did not make him a finished human being.

And this is where I think you have become so focused on Kim Sae Ron being 19 that you have stopped analysing Kim Soo Hyun as a human being at all. At 31 he was an adult, absolutely, but “adult” does not mean omniscient, emotionally perfect or incapable of making a relationship decision that later turns out badly. When he left the military in July 2019, his own words were that after thinking and worrying about many things, “right now, I really want to act” https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20190701003800315 ; this was also a man who had described acting years earlier as the thing that broke through his extreme shyness and said, “I want to act all my life.” https://www.soompi.com/article/372743wpp/kim-soo-hyun-interview-i-want-to-act-all-my-life . Only months later he left KeyEast and joined the newly created Gold Medalist with people he had worked with for years, including his cousin and longtime management associates, which looks to me like someone organizing his adult life very deliberately around his career. The acknowledged relationship with Kim Sae Ron then lasted from summer 2019 until autumn 2020, roughly a year, and after more than a year of investigation, police found no objective evidence that Kim Soo Hyun had dated Kim Sae Ron while she was a minor, including after examining the forensic results from her phone; meanwhile, key materials presented publicly as proof of that allegation were concluded by police to have been fabricated. So my psychological reading is not difficult to understand: a very career-focused man returned from the military, entered an adult relationship with someone he already knew and with whom there was obviously enough mutual closeness for a relationship to happen, and the relationship ultimately did not last.

What happened after the breakup also matters because you keep analysing only what HE might have wanted while barely considering her behavior or attachment to him. Gold Medalist later dealt with the remaining financial consequences of her DUI and ultimately wrote off approximately ₩700 million that she could not repay; I am deliberately not claiming Kim Soo Hyun personally ordered that because the agency says the financial arrangement was between the company and Kim Sae Ron. Then in March 2024, years after their relationship had ended and while "Queen of Tears" was airing, SHE uploaded an intimate-looking old photograph of herself with him to Instagram and quickly deleted it, publicly reconnecting their names; Gold Medalist said at the time that it did not know her motivation. Those are actual behaviors we can examine, and if we are going to use psychology, attachment and post-breakup boundaries deserve examination on her side just as power and age deserve examination on his. She later died by suicide on February 16, 2025, which was also his birthday, but police found no note, so I will not claim that the date proves she intended to send him a message, punish him, or make him remember her forever; doing that would be exactly the kind of unsupported psychological storytelling I am criticizing. What I WILL say is that the known history is far more psychologically complicated than a helpless girl on one side and a calculated predator on the other. There is also something else that became relevant only after her death: her own family apparently did not even know that she had married another man in January 2025. On March 21 they publicly said they had never heard anything about a marriage and could not understand the reports, yet days later a man identifying himself as her husband produced a New Jersey marriage certificate and said they had met only around November 2024, fallen in love very quickly, married in January and were already discussing annulment before she died. A former boyfriend separately argued that the fact her family did not know about the marriage demonstrated how limited their communication with her had become, although his other allegations about the husband remain disputed. This does not prove that her family lied, and I would not use the unverified abortion or abuse allegations as facts, but it proves something much simpler: they did not necessarily know everything happening in her emotional and private life. That matters when those same relatives later interpret what she supposedly felt about a relationship with Kim Soo Hyun that had ended years earlier or present themselves as knowing what particular photographs, messages or actions meant to her. Her private life after Kim Soo Hyun was clearly active and complicated enough that she could meet someone, fall in love, marry him and begin separating from him without her family apparently even knowing she was married. That is another reason I refuse to construct her entire psychological life around Kim Soo Hyun simply because he was the most famous man she once dated. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/shows-dramas/20250321/kim-sae-rons-family-denies-knowledge-of-alleged-marriage and https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/shows-dramas/20250326/kim-sae-rons-ex-boyfriend-defends-kim-soo-hyun-husband-denies-abuse-allegations

That is ultimately why I became frustrated with this discussion. Every time I bring you evidence, psychology, grooming research, neuroscience, his personality, her behavior or the actual chronology, everything eventually returns to the same sentence: "he was 31 and she was 19." You defend her vulnerability without really knowing what happened inside her mind, while judging his intentions without allowing his history, personality, career priorities or ordinary human mistakes to explain anything; she remains forever “the 19-year-old,” while he becomes this completely formed older man who supposedly must have understood every consequence of every emotional decision he made. I can accept that dating her may have been one of the worst decisions of his life, especially considering everything that eventually followed, and I can accept that she may have cared about him more deeply than the relationship could sustain, but neither of those things turns an unsuccessful adult relationship into grooming. What I cannot accept is an accusation that survives every contrary fact because the age difference itself has already decided the conclusion: if evidence of grooming is absent, the age gap becomes evidence; if police find no objective evidence supporting the alleged underage relationship, and key material presented as proof is found to have been fabricated, the answer still becomes ‘it could have happened; if ordinary psychological explanations exist, they are dismissed because “a responsible 31-year-old should have said no.” At that point the argument is no longer testing whether Kim Soo Hyun groomed Kim Sae Ron; it is protecting the belief that he MIGHT have groomed her from ever being disproved, and that is confirmation bias, not psychological analysis. To me, the psychologically coherent pattern is not difficult to see: He could have been attracted to her, cared about her and believed that an existing friendship and shared understanding of the industry could become something more, only to discover that the relationship did not fit the life he was building. Adults do that constantly, at 19, 31, 45 or 70, because mistakes in love do not stop when the prefrontal cortex reaches some internet-approved birthday. And perhaps this is the biggest misconception behind the number 31. The American Psychological Association itself places 31 within “young adulthood,” roughly ages 20–35, and developmental psychologist Clare Mehta, whose research specifically examines people in their 30s and early 40s, describes this period as the “rush hour of life”: career, identity, relationships and major life choices are all developing at the same time. Speaking about the idea that people have already finished figuring out who they are once they reach their 30s, she says, “I’m not saying that’s not still happening when you reach your 30s and 40s because, surprisingly, my research has actually suggested that it is still happening.” Psychology does not describe a 31-year-old as a finished human being who suddenly possesses perfect emotional judgment. It describes someone still developing, choosing, succeeding, failing and making mistakes—exactly like the rest of us. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/established-adulthood

And this is where I think your interpretation has become fixed around one number. You analyse her as a vulnerable 19-year-old whose background might explain everything she felt and did, but you barely allow his background, personality, ambitions or mistakes to explain anything he did because “he was 31.” You don't know who pursued whom, we do not have evidence that the earlier acquaintance contained grooming behavior, the acknowledged adult relationship lasted about a year, and after more than a year of police investigation the alleged underage relationship was not substantiated. Yet every alternative explanation eventually comes back to the same answer: he should have known better because he was 31. That is exactly why I became frustrated—because I am not asking you to like their relationship; I am asking you to analyse both human beings, instead of treating one as permanently vulnerable because she was 19 and the other as permanently calculating because he was 31. At this point, dating her may indeed have been one of the biggest mistakes of his life, but making a bad relationship decision is very different from grooming somebody, and age alone cannot fill the enormous evidentiary gap between those two things.

Oscar Wilde probably put it better than anyone: “The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.” Age does not automatically produce wisdom, good judgment or emotional maturity. Sometimes it simply changes the kind of certainty people have about themselves and others.

I think this is where I finally understand why we cannot reach the same conclusion. You keep asking what a 31-year-old man could possibly want with a 19-year-old woman, as though attraction itself needs a socially acceptable justification before it can become a relationship. As a gay man, I am particularly wary of that reasoning because I know what happens when society decides that a form of attraction it finds uncomfortable must therefore have something psychologically wrong behind it. The APA notes that most gay and bisexual people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual attraction, yet those attractions were historically treated as immoral, pathological and dangerous precisely because the majority could not understand them. I am obviously not saying homosexuality and an age-gap relationship are equivalent; I am saying that “I cannot imagine wanting this myself” has never been a reliable psychological test of whether somebody else's attraction is unhealthy. Research even shows that disgust and perceived violations of social norms can significantly intensify moral condemnation, including toward relationships that depart from conventional expectations. (American Psychological Association, “Understanding Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality”; Morrison et al., meta-analysis on disgust and prejudice, 2019.) https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/orientation https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30570430/

And I don't think Kim Soo Hyun needs some extraordinary psychological motive to explain why he dated her. People become attracted through appearance, familiarity, shared environments, reciprocal interest and emotion; they do not normally calculate whether the other person's age, salary and career position produce the most socially symmetrical partnership available to them. I am 45 and last year I dated a 31-year-old—a 14-year difference, larger than theirs—and nobody needs to invent a pathology to explain why two adults might enjoy one another enough to date. Of course 31 and 19 involves a greater difference in life stage than 45 and 31, and I understand why that makes you personally uncomfortable, but discomfort still does not tell us who pursued whom or what either person intended. We actually do not know who initiated their relationship, which makes saying that he “will always be the pursuer” an assumption created from their ages rather than a fact about them. Adults also have casual sexual relationships and one-night stands across very large age differences all the time; if consensual attraction between those adults can exist without automatically proving predation, turning that attraction into an actual relationship does not suddenly reveal some sinister motive.

The timeline matters to me as well. The relationship Gold Medalist acknowledges lasted from summer 2019 until autumn 2020, roughly a year—not an adult relationship in which he spent many years progressively controlling her. If the argument is instead that their earlier acquaintance was secretly years of grooming, then there needs to be evidence of grooming behaviour during that earlier period; simply knowing her before she was an adult cannot be used as a substitute for those behaviours. And what followed does not fit neatly into the simplistic story people keep imposing either: they broke up, went on with their lives, and two years later Gold Medalist still worked with Kim Sae Ron to deal with the enormous financial consequences of her DUI, ultimately covering the remaining debt she could not repay and writing roughly ₩700 million off as a bad debt. That does not prove Kim Soo Hyun personally made those financial decisions, and I won't claim that it does, but it does show why I refuse to reduce years of complicated human interactions to “older successful man identified vulnerable teenager, groomed her and used her.” The verified story is simply much messier than that narrative. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20250314005900315

So yes, I understand perfectly why you would never personally date someone with that age difference and why you would advise your daughter against it. But that is ultimately a boundary YOU have established, just as my experiences, another family's experiences or another culture's norms can produce very different boundaries. What I cannot accept is moving from “I would never do this” to “therefore I will always be suspicious of the person who did,” even when the psychological explanation no longer requires anything sinister and the factual investigation has not substantiated the alleged underage relationship. At that point there is no evidence I could possibly show you that would change the conclusion, because the conclusion comes first and everything else is being interpreted through it. I respect your right to dislike their relationship, but I don't think personal discomfort is enough for me to continue treating a man as a possible groomer indefinitely.

I think this is probably where our discussion has reached its natural end. I understand that the age difference makes you uncomfortable, but after looking at the investigation, psychology, neuroscience, relationship research and the actual timeline, your suspicion still returns to the same starting point: 31 and 19 simply feels wrong to you. That is a personal boundary you are absolutely entitled to have, but it is not something I can turn into evidence against another person.

Jonathan Swift expressed the problem rather well more than three centuries ago: “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.” At some point, if a conclusion was reached through discomfort rather than evidence, more evidence cannot really resolve the disagreement.

I actually can think of several psychologically ordinary reasons why a 31-year-old man could become involved with a 19-year-old woman without predatory intent. Attraction is not normally a rational calculation where someone thinks, “I am successful, therefore I should choose someone of X age and income.” In real-world speed-dating research, Luo and Zhang found that physical attractiveness was the strongest predictor of initial attraction for both sexes, while other research identifies reciprocal liking—being attracted to someone who clearly likes you—as another major mechanism in romantic attraction. Familiarity and repeated interaction also increase the opportunity for attachment to develop. So if two attractive people already know each other, work in the same unusual profession and affection becomes reciprocal, psychology does not require some hidden pathological reason for them to date. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19558447/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8074860/

There is also an assumption in your question that I don't think we can make: “why he thought to pursue her.” We don't know that he pursued her, who first expressed romantic interest, or exactly how the relationship changed from acquaintance to romance. And the age attraction itself is not psychologically inexplicable: a large 45-country replication involving 14,399 people found that men, on average, preferred younger and physically attractive partners, while population research likewise finds that men's range of acceptable partners becomes younger relative to themselves as men age. That doesn't mean every large age gap is ideal, and it certainly doesn't prove that Kim Soo Hyun chose her *because* she was 19; it simply means that a 31-year-old heterosexual man being attracted to a younger adult woman is not some psychological anomaly requiring grooming as its explanation. Leonardo DiCaprio, your brothers and your husband's preferences are interesting individual examples, but psychology is based on population patterns, and those patterns are considerably broader. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32196435/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10367477/

And you're right about one thing concerning Korea: a gap that large is "not the norm". But “not the norm” and “culturally abnormal” are different claims. Statistics Korea shows that in 2019—the year their acknowledged relationship began—"5.2% of Korean first marriages involved a husband at least ten years older than his wife"; even in 2024 it was 3.9%, about 6,900 first marriages in a single year. So Korean culture certainly favors much smaller gaps, and people may judge a 12-year difference, especially when the younger person is 19, but it is not some almost-unheard-of arrangement that by itself demands a pathological explanation. I completely understand why the combination of 31, 19 and prior acquaintance makes you uncomfortable; where we differ is that discomfort makes you ask “what sinister reason explains this?”, whereas relationship psychology already gives several ordinary ones—attraction, reciprocal affection, familiarity and opportunity—before we ever need to introduce exploitation. https://www.kostat.go.kr/board.es?act=view&bid=204&list_no=435601&mid=a10301010000

I think there is also something important about the word “weird,” because what feels instinctively wrong to one person is heavily influenced by the society and family they grew up in. Cousin marriage is a good example: in France first cousins can legally marry, although culturally many French people would find the idea extremely uncomfortable, while research shows that first-cousin marriage is socially accepted and even preferred in a number of Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian societies. The relationship itself has not changed; what changes dramatically is the cultural meaning people attach to it. That does not mean culture automatically makes every relationship healthy, but it shows why “I find this disgusting/weird” cannot itself be psychological evidence that something unhealthy occurred. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/section_lc/LEGITEXT000006070721/LEGISCTA000006136117/2025-06-25 and https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3419292/

France gives us an interesting age-gap example too. Our current president is married to a woman 24 years older than him, and they famously met when he was 15 and she was his 39-year-old theatre teacher; obviously the teacher/student element makes their circumstances very different and has itself generated controversy, so I am not presenting it as equivalent to Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Sae Ron. My point is simply that French society clearly does not operate on a rule that a large age difference automatically makes an adult relationship psychologically incomprehensible or socially impossible. France 24 itself describes Macron as having “famously fell in love” with Brigitte at 15, and they eventually married and have now been together publicly for decades. So when you ask how anyone could possibly understand 31 and 19 without suspecting something sinister, I think part of the answer is that your instinctive boundary is yours; it isn't a universal psychological boundary shared by everybody else. https://graphics.france24.com/france-2022-presidential-elections-french-politics/

A few factual corrections are probably useful here because confirmed developments and speculation are starting to get mixed together. Kim Se-ui is not currently “in prison for what he did” in the sense of serving a sentence: he is detained pending trial after being arrested and indicted, and there has not yet been a criminal conviction. His case was transferred to Seoul Central District Court Criminal Collegiate Division 26, a three-judge panel, and the preparatory hearing is scheduled for September 11. That transfer is a procedural decision and does not itself establish guilt, although the prosecution has of course already considered the evidence sufficient to indict him. Source: https://www.starnewskorea.com/en/star/2026/08/29/2026082714161186054

The idea raised in the livestream that several people can somehow “divide up” Kim Se-ui’s potential prison sentence is also legally incorrect, even if it was partly said as a joke. Article 30 of the Korean Criminal Act says that when two or more people jointly commit an offense, each is punished as a principal offender; Article 32 separately provides reduced punishment for someone legally found to be only an accessory. Article 51 then requires the court to determine punishment according to each offender’s own circumstances, relationship to the victim, motive, methods, consequences and conduct after the offense. So if several people were eventually prosecuted and convicted, responsibility would be assessed individually rather than taking a hypothetical ten-year sentence and dividing it between them. Korean Criminal Act: https://law.go.kr/LSW/lsInfoP.do?chrClsCd=010203&lsiSeq=223445&urlMode=engLsInfoR&viewCls=engLsInfoR

There are nevertheless real developments involving people who previously supported the allegations. Police referred part of Kwon Young-chan’s case to prosecutors on July 24 after concluding that a defamation allegation concerning statements about Kim Soo-hyun was substantiated sufficiently for referral; that is a referral, not a conviction. Boo Ji-seok is also more than merely a name being speculated about: the arrest-warrant documentation publicly disclosed by Kim Se-ui referred to “suspect Boo Ji-seok,” even though Kim Soo-hyun’s side said they had not originally filed a complaint against him, suggesting investigators separately examined his possible involvement. But that still does not allow us to call everyone an “accomplice” before their individual legal responsibility has been determined. Sources: https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260810131251004 and https://enews.imbc.com/News/ViewAmp/505822

I would also be very careful with the new allegations about Kim Se-ui’s mother, the Gwacheon parking lot, undeclared cash income, billions of won in taxes, rooftop alterations, tenant deposits and the family supposedly having almost no cash. I searched Korean police, prosecution, tax-authority and major-news reporting and could not find independent official confirmation of those claims at this stage. They currently appear to come from Eun Hyun-jang’s own investigation and livestream commentary, so they should remain labelled as allegations unless documents are produced and an authority confirms an investigation or violation. The same standard should apply regardless of which side the information benefits: we criticised unsupported allegations against Kim Soo-hyun, so we should not repeat unsupported allegations against Kim Se-ui’s family as established facts either.

Finally, repeatedly calling Kim Soo-hyun a “groomer” is no longer simply repeating an unresolved allegation as though nothing has happened since 2025. Seoul Seongdong Police closed the Child Welfare Act case without referral for insufficient evidence after more than a year of investigation, taking into account the forensic examination of Kim Sae-ron’s phone and concluding that there was insufficient objective evidence to establish the alleged underage relationship. Yonhap reported that police also regarded the disputed recording as suspicious for manipulation, while SBS reported that Gangnam Police described the KakaoTalk material and audio presented as evidence in Kim Se-ui’s case as forged in its arrest-warrant application. None of that is a criminal-trial verdict against every person who made the allegations, but it does mean that presenting “groomer” today as an established fact ignores what the actual investigation found. Sources: https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260729127851004 and https://news.sbs.co.kr/english/endPage.do?newsId=N1008680904

For your information: If Kim Se-ui is convicted on most of the major charges currently indicted, I would consider roughly 3–6 years in prison a realistic range, with 5–7 years possible if the court accepts the prosecution’s aggravated version of the repeated defamation, stalking, threats/coercion and private-image allegations. Korean Criminal Act Articles 37–38 govern how multiple offenses are sentenced together, so the court does not simply add every statutory maximum. Financially, his biggest risk is the civil damages case, not the criminal fines. Kim Soo-hyun and Gold Medalist’s lawsuit was originally ₩12 billion, and Kim Soo-hyun’s lawyers later said the total economic damage could be around ₩30 billion and that they were considering expanding the claim. That does not mean he will be ordered to pay ₩30 billion; under Korean Civil Act Article 750, damages must correspond to loss caused by the unlawful conduct and ultimately proven in court. But a judgment in the billions of won is a genuine possibility if substantial liability and losses are proven. So potentially several years in prison + potentially several billion won in damages, with Kim Soo-hyun’s side currently claiming losses that could reach ₩30 billion. Courts have already provisionally frozen ₩4 billion worth of claims against Kim Se-ui’s apartment interests, plus a Garo Sero donation account, to preserve assets while the civil litigation proceeds.

I already explained why I agree that Kim Sae Ron had psychological vulnerability factors, so what interests me now is the other half of the relationship: Kim Soo Hyun’s psychology. We know that his parents separated when he was young, that he was raised mainly by his mother, that he was extremely shy and had difficulty even looking people in the eye, and that his mother pushed him into acting specifically to help him connect with other people. Research on parental separation shows an association with both anxious and avoidant attachment patterns, particularly through what psychologists call an abandonment schema: learning early that important relationships may not necessarily remain stable. Other research adds an important nuance: the way the parents behave after separation and the security provided by the remaining parent can reduce those effects, which fits a child who appears to have had a strong and supportive relationship with his mother. Psychologically, that combination can produce someone who wants affection and closeness but also places considerable importance on independence, stability and protecting himself from relationships that feel uncertain or disruptive.

His later behaviour fits that pattern remarkably well. Acting was originally the means by which he overcame his social walls, and he later said, “I want to act all my life,” while also saying that he preferred concentrating on acting rather than trying to “chase two rabbits.” That makes his career more than simply a job in his psychological development: it became the activity through which the shy child learned confidence, social recognition and an adult identity. Research on occupational identity shows that when a profession becomes highly central to somebody’s identity, threats to it can provoke defensive and protective behaviour because the threat is experienced partly as a threat to the self. So when Kim Soo Hyun returned from military service in 2019 after "Real" had failed badly, wanting to rebuild his acting career, it makes psychological sense that he could accept affection and enjoy a relationship while remaining extremely protective of his independence, privacy and professional stability.

That also changes how I interpret some of the behaviour that people automatically portray as suspicious. A man with that pattern does not need to be grooming a younger woman to keep a relationship private, hesitate about commitment or eventually leave it; those behaviours are equally consistent with someone who enjoys emotional closeness but becomes protective when a relationship risks becoming incompatible with the stable life and career he has built. Kim Sae Ron, meanwhile, appears to have entered relationships carrying very different pressures, which we already discussed. Put those two psychological patterns together and you can easily imagine a relationship in which one person wanted or needed more emotional permanence while the other cared for her but placed stronger boundaries around how far the relationship could enter the rest of his life. That can hurt somebody profoundly without anyone having groomed, exploited or abused anyone.

This is why psychology actually reinforces my reluctance to portray Kim Soo Hyun as a predator. The known pattern is: parental separation and a predominantly maternal upbringing, severe childhood shyness, acting becoming the mechanism through which he built his confidence and identity, and repeated statements showing that his career occupied an unusually central place in his future. Attachment research and occupational-identity research give those facts a coherent psychological explanation: affection can be welcomed while instability, dependency and threats to the life someone has painstakingly constructed are resisted. That does not make every decision he made kind or guarantee that Kim Sae Ron was never hurt by him; relationships can end badly and one person can love more than the other. But it gives a much more psychologically grounded explanation for his behaviour than starting with “31-year-old successful man + vulnerable 19-year-old woman” and assuming that the missing variable must have been predatory intent.

I understand why you use statistics, but this is exactly where psychology becomes useful because population risk and individual guilt are not the same thing. Research does show that age-disparate relationships can carry higher risks in some populations, particularly when the younger partner is still an adolescent, but even those studies describe associations and mediating factors such as relationship power; they do not say that an age gap itself demonstrates abuse. One study of adolescent girls explicitly noted that evidence connecting older partners with intimate-partner violence was limited and inconsistent. Research on adult age-gap relationships also finds very mixed outcomes, including functioning and satisfied relationships, which would make it scientifically wrong to treat the age difference as a diagnostic sign of abuse.

The same problem exists with the word “grooming.” Winters, Jeglic and Kaylor’s validated Sexual Grooming Model, developed by specialists in sexual offending, describes an actual behavioral process: selecting a vulnerable child, gaining access and isolating them, deceptively developing trust, gradually desensitizing them to sexual content or contact, and maintaining control after abuse. Simply knowing someone while she was underage and later dating her as an adult does not establish those behaviors. Forensic psychology also specifically warns against relying on unstructured impressions, because they are vulnerable to evaluator bias; structured professional judgment requires case-specific information rather than deciding that someone fits a statistical profile. So when you say, “He knew exactly what he was doing,” that is actually the part I cannot follow: age, money and fame can create potential power differences, but none of them tells us what his intention was.

Statistics are useful for identifying situations that deserve attention and investigation. They are not a substitute for analysing the individual relationship in front of us. Otherwise we are no longer saying, “this type of situation can carry greater risk”; we are saying, “this man probably abused her because men in somewhat similar situations sometimes do,” which is a completely different claim. That is why specialists distinguish risk factors from evidence of actual offending. I can understand being uncomfortable with their relationship without turning that discomfort into a psychological diagnosis of grooming.

On this specific point, I think you are right and I need to correct my earlier interpretation. A 30% fee based on “recovery” clearly points to money obtained through damages, settlement or compensation. It does not naturally relate to simply filing a criminal complaint. Korean law also makes this distinction important, because contingency fees tied to the outcome of criminal cases are invalid.

So I should not have treated that 30% clause as evidence that the later May 7 complaint against Kim Soo Hyun was necessarily covered by the original agreement. That complaint was based on the later audio recording, which did not exist when the agreement was signed. The remaining question is therefore different: what monetary recovery was that 30% actually supposed to apply to? But on whether the later criminal complaint was automatically part of the original agreement, I agree with you.

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.