Kim Sae Ron’s Family Commemorates Her 49th Day of Passing as Embattled Actor Kim Soo Hyun Loses Majority of Brand CFs and Petition to Raise Age of Consent Laws in South Korea Close to Garnering Required Signatures
The Kim Soo Hyun allegedly dated then minor aged Kim Sae Ron scandal appears to be slowing down in the media sphere as both sides have turned to the court systems with lawsuits filed against each side. Today on April 5th it’s the 49th day of Kim Sae Ron’s passing on February 16th, which also happens to be ex-boyfriend Kim Soo Hyun’s birthday which was always a very notable aspect of her suicide to do it on that particular date. Her family and friends are commemorating her passing as the 49th day is a big marker in many Asian cultures associated with death and it’s a fitting reminder that in all the talk about Kim Soo Hyun’s fall from grace and him trying to protect his “star Kim Soo Hyun” image (as he said so in the press conference for why he denied dating her initially), at the foremost of this scandal is that there is a young woman who is dead and leaves behind a permanent sadness for those who loved her.
In terms of Kim Soo Hyun’s public image, of the 16 brand endorsements he had, the majority have cancelled or not renewed its contract with him and he’s down to only 4 brands, and 3 are overseas brands one in the Philippines, one Swiss, and one Japanese so only one domestic SK brand left. A public petition named “The Kim Soo Hyun Prevention Act” that would raise the age of consent from currently 13-16 years old to 13-19 years old has garnered over 45K signatures in 5 days and is close to reaching the required 50K signatures needed to submit it to the National Assembly to request that it be voted into law. If it does become law and keeps that title it would be nearly unfathomable that Disney+ would want to eventually air Knock Off when the male lead has a law preventing pedophilia named after him in South Korea. Perhaps if there is no legal ramifications for him dating then underaged Kim Sae Ron (to which he denies he did), the public name and shaming will bring a measure of karma.
The petition name…wow, he will be remembered for decades… ‘Star Kim Soo Hyun’ can take a break till Court lawsuits ends. I doubt he will be busy with work for awhile.
I’ve seen a lot of negative headlines featuring IU over the last 24 hours. IU was a good friend of Sulli. She should be celebrating the success of her latest drama WLGYT, yet has to put up with this.
GM are particularly nasty but now known for dragging down a successful woman in the press to help out their King of Tears. Glad that KSR family are not letting this disappear from the media.
As for the Prevention Act, even if passed there are a lot of barriers to preventing such abuse from happening in future.
IU and Sulli were close and loyal friends for many years and through a lot of online hate, I remember she cancelled her promotional activities when Sulli died.
If it’s true that IU was the one to pass on the script for Real to Sulli after turning it down, it must be especially sad for her – back in 2016-17 IU probably thought she was helping out a friend trying to start an acting career by passing her a project that looked guaranteed to be a hit (starred KSH who had literally never had a flop project and was the biggest name for actors in that age group). And if this was the original version of the script she wouldn’t have known about the ‘added later’ nudity either, just assumed in good faith that her close friend KSH wouldn’t take advantage of her other close friend Sulli. She and Suzy (close friends with both KSH and Sulli) even made a cameo in the movie out of goodwill!
honestly this makes KSH look like an even bigger sociopath, he was close friends with IU for how many years but still treated her friend like that? What he did to Sulli on that movie shows 0 respect for either professional standards or their mutual friend’s trust. With “friends” like these…
At this point, would he even face legal repercussions? For dating a minor?
Going from 13-16 to 13-19 seems pointless. Why not make it 16-19? It’s troubling that 13-15 is there.
What a way to go into the history books. I hope they stop exposing more of her personal life to the public. RIP KSR.
I am not surprised at all that Kim Soo-hyun gets to keep the Bench contract. Philippines is notoriously gross about grooming.
Sexualization of minors is really rampant in Filipino social media, and there are at least two high-profile cases of grooming (Coco Martin who targeted a child actress, and EJ Laure who impregnated herself using a child actor) that have passed by without any real consequence other than online criticism.
Not surprisingly, the same trolls who defend Rodrigo Duterte are also up in arms about the “bullying” of Kim Soo-hyun who to them did nothing wrong. Fucking conservatives.
It’s a running joke here in the Philippines that he is going to be the next contract artist of Sparkle GMA Artist Center. After losing his career in Korea, 31-year-old Jisoo became the leading man for 19-year-old transitioning child actress in the daytime soap opera Abot-kamay na Pangarap. So, Kim Soo-hyun getting paired up with another child actress is not totally out of questin.
That’s so messed up…
You sound really funny and pathetic, just like your username. Why is it so easy for you to judge? You drop a lot of names here. KSH is still on trial. Let time reveal the truth! Get a life and let everyone enjoy their own peace.
Lol looks like one of the Philippine trolls that the OP was talking about has found her way to KP.
I had no idea Jisoo is acting in the Philippines!!! I thought he was done as an actor.
Jisoo just guested in the Philippine version of Big Brother! Haha. So for the time being, he has some source of income.
Do not equate those who support Duterte with the fans of KSH. Duterte got his comeuppance for the 30,000 deaths during his presidency. Don’t put a negative spin on Bench not dropping KSH as its model. Don’t condemn all Filipinos because of Coco and EJ.
What are you, my employer? Feel free to be pro-groomer because that is on your conscience, but you do not get to command me to share your beliefs.
Did all of you heard the news a crackdown on international child porn in south Korea,Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong resulted in 435 individual arrested,374 out of 435 are south Koreans.a lot of South Korean man are involve in child porno.
Wow…I will have to google on it. Awful people to prey on kids…
it so sad and disturbing
No, I didn’t hear that, and I didn’t want to hear about that. Next time, please, first warn you’re bringing a sensitive topic, before writing it, so some people can skip it, and after that say what you want to say.
Some people are very sensitive to such information
I don’t understand the proposed law. Why is there an age range? If the purpose is to punish people for dating minors, shouldn’t the age of consent be 19 years only? Why have it be ages 13-19? If the law still contains age 13 as a legal age of consent, isn’t this law moot? Where is the change? I’m confused.
It has nothing to do with the age of consent but the threshold age of what can be considered as statutory rape. The current statutory rape law is:
1) Victim is 12 and under – statutory rape regardless of the age of accused (this is the age of consent part where anyone below 13 cannot give consent)
2) Victim is between 13 and 16 yrs – statutory rape if the accused is 19 yrs and older (the reason they are proposing an age range)
3) Victim is 16 yrs old and older, crime will be prosecuted as either rape or sexual assault depending on the circumstances and so violence, coercion, duress, etc need to be alleged and proven.
What they are proposing is to raise the threshold age for from between 13 to 16 yrs old in the current law to between 13 to 19 yrs old with 19 being the age of majority in South Korea.
While the underlying situation is sad, I would love to understand the family’s motives. It is not as if they were unaware he was with her , they bear responsibility for the situation.
Should he have dated someone so young? No but then again blame the culture and her supposed guardians, they condoned it. Plenty of witnesses and no one said anything then, so why now?
I agree with you that her family should have put a stop to it as her guardians. However, look at it from their perspective – their daughter was a breadwinner for the family from a young age so she would have had some autonomy for herself which they would respect. She was dating a well known actor who was also instrumental in her career as she joined his family’s agency.
Kim Soo Hyun was entirely wrong to even start the relationship to begin with – his age and his position over her would have put the much younger Kim Sae Ron at a disadvantage in the relationship.
Her family may have chosen to look the other way for several reasons – if they rejected the relationship, would Kim Soo Hyun tried to have encouraged Kim Sae Ron to leave her family permanently? Would he have leaked sensitive information about her to potentially ruin her career?
At the end of the day, I think Kim Sae Ron’s family wanted her to be happy and they thought that her relationship with Kim Soo Hyun would do that. As an older man in a highly patriarchal South Korean society, they may have even thought that he would protect and look after her.
Kim Soo Hyun had all the power in this relationship due to his age, career and popularity. Personally, I see him as the predator here, regardless of whether his relationship with her started when she was still underaged.
As far as I can see it, her family chose to speak out after her death when there was no acknowledgement from Kim Soo Hyun. I believe if he had said something, anything, about her death at the time – for example, expressing his condolences (I’m not even saying to acknowledge a romantic relationship) – they would not have revealed all of this.
It was a blatant disrespect to Kim Sae Ron’s memory for him to ignore her passing, both on February 16th when it happened and then again in his recent press conference where all he did was refer to her as “the deceased” and call himself “star Kim Soo Hyun”. He wanted to bury their past and continue to ignore this poor girl even in death – totally heartless.
So yeah, back to the heart of your comment, I don’t blame her family at all. I’m sure they regret now, having seen how things played out, but they must have had their reasons. They lost their daughter much too early and she was treated too unkindly in life. May Kim Sae Ron rest in peace.
If the age limit law is passed, I think it honors her if it prevents even one young person being taken advantage of.
I just noticed the last part of your comment so I thought I’d respond to it. My apologies for the double comment though.
The family bears responsibility for the situation – disagree. Refer to other comment as to why.
Should he have dated someone so young? No but blame the culture and those around them who knew but condoned it then so why now? – Oh, it was wrong then and it’s wrong now too. The only reason it’s being brought up is because someone committed SUICIDE. On the accused’s BIRTHDAY. If that doesn’t point a finger toward the culprit, I don’t know what does. I’ve seen some people call it a manipulation tactic – are we really blaming this girl even in death after she was tortured so much in life?
Blame the culture for him dating someone so young – Why? A person is not the sum of the environment they’re raised in. A good person does not engage in a relationship with such a power imbalance.
Plenty of witnesses – agreed, they’re all complicit in not protecting Kim Sae Ron including her family. But between the two people in the actual relationship – Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Sae Ron – who is the one at fault? The older, more advanced in career and popularity “star Kim Soo Hyun” who engaged in a relationship with a much younger actress, attached her to his family’s agency which then dropped her like a hot potato after her DUI scandal, ignored her repeated attempts to contact him when the agency came knocking for their money? Or the younger child actress who underwent a DUI scandal and was trying to make an honest comeback?
I usually avoid trying to comment on this situation but then I see this particular comment blaming the family and not the man actually involved in the relationship.
My guess to the fluid age range is that it depends on the age of the older person. Like minors dating each other, or if a man dates a teen girl half his age. There is a huge difference if a 27-year-old man dates (and automatically grooms) a 15-year-old young girl or if a 17/18-year-old boy dates 15 years.
Anyone who argues otherwise is so deeply into the patriarchal and pick-me mindset that they don’t see how harmful it is for minors to be exploited by fully grown-up men wanting “fresh meat”. So disgusting.
Furthermore, simply watching and washing their hands clean by saying “I don’t do anything”; just waiting for someone else/authorities to do something is part of the problem why victims are doomed repeatedly and multifactorially. Even if they are released from their predators, they face the next ordeal to heal and are traumatized for life. They’re facing unjustified questions like what part they did wrong to provoke such behavior upon themselves. Even though, it has been shown repeatedly that it doesn’t matter what a victim does! If a predator wants to fulfill his urges, he will, regardless of what the victim wears, does, etc. There is a reason for the high estimated number of unknown cases. It is very hard to get justice legally. Justice is often beyond reach for victims. Sure, let’s ask first what the victim did wrong and what circumstances could explain the predator’s behavior. Or use the “he-said-she-said” label to stifle any investigation from the outset.
Sorry, I’m so worked up about all the things I have read over the last couple of weeks in the comments here. It just opened up so many wounds that I can’t comprehend the constant defending system still going on from people comfortingly living their lives, attacking people like watchdogs, and pouring their agenda over everything. How can people still side with predators and act all morally innocent?
To take a full circle to the age dispute, it’s siding with predators, if you don’t recognize that there is a huge power imbalance and inherently exploitation at work in romantic/sexual relationships between fully grown-ups and minors.
To clarify what am referring to is legal injustice regarding all offenses of sexual harassment, nonconsesual contact, abuse, r*pe, exploitation, grooming, revenge p*orn, etc.
I have faith in the legal system regarding other offences and crimies. However, the former is a muddy place and more often than not results in unbelievable disadvantages for victims.
The horrible cherry on the top is if children are involved
Petition tipped over 50,000 signatures. So it’s heading to Parliamentary Committees to further discuss.
Thanks for update.
@pilgrim, His fans are already saying this is straight up defamation if the act is using KSH’s name when he is not proven guilty. His fans are doing smear campaign against KSR again and now say she has other bfs during her minor years. Korea law is so messed up. I thought Lee Jin Ho got an order not to speak. Why the heck is he talking again?
I saw a user name similar to yours on Allkpop under his article. I wasn’t sure if it is you but I see a lot of pedo supporters there so I didnt bother chiming in.
Japanese brand Decorte AQ is no longer contracting Kim Soo Hyun.
Really? It took them so long? He still has Mido too. But I think he cares the most right now is Disney not dropping him. Losing cf is one thing but he is trying hard not to let Disney cancel him which is why he is working around the clock trying to prove himself innocence, silencing dissent and those who are against him on weibo, douban, reddit, and buying media to report other news.