Kim Soo-hyun’s legal team has released roughly 150 diary-style letters he wrote to a then-girlfriend while serving in the military, saying they’re pushing back with verified facts as a police probe into YouTube channel Hover Lab’s claims drags on.
On September 30, attorney Go Sang-rok of the law firm Phil said in a statement that while there are a concentrated number of photos from mid-2019 through 2020―when Kim and the late Kim Sae-ron actually dated―Hover Lab has yet to produce a single additional item to support its allegation that the two were in a “six-year relationship starting in middle school,” despite boasting it had “thousands” of images.
Back in March, the channel first alleged a six-year relationship of Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Sae-ron since she was a minor, declaring on air that its trove was “more shocking than the ‘Nth Room’ scandal,” that it had “thousands of photos,” and that “we have time―and more than enough evidence.”
Go added that beyond the images Kim shared after her passing, a photo the late actress briefly posted to Instagram last March during the run of "Queen of Tears"―and quickly deleted―was also misrepresented. Although the image was taken in late February 2020, when she was a college sophomore, the channel claimed it was from 2016, her first year of high school―an assertion he called blatantly false.
The attorney said that from Kim’s enlistment in October 2017 until before his discharge, he wrote more than 150 diary-like letters to the woman he was dating at the time. These materials have been provided to investigators, and a portion has now been made public.
The letters include lines such as, “I want to write your name so badly... but I can’t. I love you.” (April 6, 2018), “I want us to go the distance―love each other deeply, and sometimes fight, make up, even sulk. There’s so much I want to experience with you.” (July 30, 2018), and “I’m not thinking about anything else―just focusing on her, caring for her, wanting her, waiting for her. I miss her and want to see her all the time.” (August 3, 2018)―entries that read unmistakably like messages to a romantic partner.
“It’s extraordinarily unusual and distressing for a celebrity’s deeply private exchanges with a former partner to be reviewed by lawyers, submitted to investigators, and partially disclosed to the public just to set the record straight,” Go said, urging stern punishment. “The harm he’s suffering stems from a coordinated, malicious cyberattack that, in the digital age, resembles organized violence.”
Meanwhile, after the late Kim Sae-ron’s death in February of last year, Hover Lab began claiming within a month that she had dated Kim when she was a minor. YouTuber Kwon Young-chan also held a press conference, saying he was acting as a representative for Kim Sae-ron’s family.
(SBS Entertainment News | Kang Kyung-youn)