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Manila Bulletin devider Entertainment devider Kim Soo-hyun's agency Gold Medalist refutes allegations by Kim Sae-ron's family

Kim Soo-hyun's agency Gold Medalist refutes allegations by Kim Sae-ron's family

Published Mar 18, 2025 09:40 am

Gold Medalist, the agency of embattled actor Kim Soo-hyun, has issued a new statement on March 18 to refute allegations by the family of the late actress Kim Sae-ron and the YouTube channel HoverLab (Garosero Research Institute).

The statement covered topics such as Kim Sae-ron’s debt, a photo uploaded by a fan account on Instagram in 2017, and actress Seo Ye-ji. 

Kim Sae-ron was involved in a drunk driving incident in May 2022. 

As a result, her career came to a halt and had to pay penalties for projects including the Netflix series “Bloodhounds.”  Gold Medalist paid 686.4 million won (about $474,000) for the Netflix series and the actress owed this money to the company. 

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Kim Soo-hyun kissing Kim Sae-ron (Screenshot from HoverLab video on YouTube)

Kim Sae-ron was found dead last Feb. 16, the birthday of Kim Soo-hyun, who recently admitted that he dated her when she became an adult from 2019 to 2020. 

Her family said Gold Medalist, through a law firm it hired, pressured Kim Sae-ron to pay the money. LKB & Partners, now involved in the impeachment trial of Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, sent two certified letters to Kim Sae-ron about her debt on March 15 and 25, 2024. 

“We would like to share our position on the claims made by the late Kim Sae-ron’s bereaved family at the press conference held with Garosero Research Institute (hereinafter referred to as Gaseyeon) on March 17 and on Gaseyeon’s YouTube channel,” Gold Medalist said in the new statement, Korean media reported.  

Gold Medalist denied that it threatened Kim Sae-ron that she would be held liable for damages to the drama “Queen of Tears” if she posted another photo related to Kim Soo-hyun. 

After Kim Sae-ron received the first certified letter from the law firm, she sent Kim Soo-hyun a text, begging him to help her with the repayment schedule of her debt. She didn’t receive any reply. 

On March 24, 2024, Kim Sae-ron posted a photo on Instagram, showing her and Kim Soo-hyun posing cheek-to-cheek. 

“As can be confirmed through the certified letter of content, we have never demanded compensation for damages to the work from Kim Sae-ron. It is also impossible to claim damages by posting photos on SNS or contacting actors from the agency,” Gold Medalist said. 

It said, “As stated in the previous statement, we sent a certified letter to Ms. Kim Sae-ron by mail to notify her of this by stating that the debt owed to her is in a state of ‘uncollectible’ and to eliminate the possibility of dereliction of duty by our executives. This is the first certified letter sent on March 15, 2024.”

“However, as is known, Ms. Kim Sae-ron sent a text message to Mr. Kim Soo-hyun about this, and on March 24, she posted a photo of the two of them on SNS. The certified letter we sent on March 25 was to explain the reason for urging her to pay off her debt in order to relieve her concerns, and to explain that we are willing to negotiate proactively regarding debt repayment,” the agency said. 

It said, “We explained to Ms. Kim Sae-ron that we sent the second certified letter because ‘if the company does not request payment of your loan debt when it is due, there is a possibility that the executives of the client company will be charged with breach of trust,’ and expressed our ‘intention to proactively discuss with you the method and timing of debt repayment.’”

The company said the second certified letter was sent to Kim Sae-ron “to prove that ‘the debt repayment was demanded but could not be collected,’ so it cannot include the content ‘the debt does not have to be repaid.’ If our company had explicitly used the expression ‘the debt does not have to be repaid,’ it would have been exempting Ms. Kim Sae-ron from debt, which could have caused a gift tax issue for her.” 

On March 26, 2024, it said it contacted Kim Sae-ron’s management company at the time and explained the purpose of the certified letter. 

“In response, Ms. Kim Sae-ron stated her position through the second certified mail, ‘I am grateful for the goodwill you have shown me in the past, and I will naturally take responsibility for the damages you have suffered, so I would like to discuss and coordinate the amount of damages that I have to bear and the future repayment plan,’” the agency said. 

Gold Medalist said it wrote off the amount owed by Kim Sae-ron as bad debt without any additional demands or negotiations regarding payment. 

It said that “when Ms. Kim Sae-ron uploaded the photo on SNS on March 24 [2024], ‘Queen of Tears,’ in which Mr. Kim Soo-hyun is starring, was airing. In this situation, when Ms. Kim Sae-ron posted the photo, at least 50 articles poured in from 2:14 a.m. when the photo was posted to 11 a.m. when our company announced its official position. Accordingly, we needed to inform Ms. Kim Sae-ron that such an abrupt action could affect all parties involved, including the drama production company, actors and staff, broadcasting stations, and OTT. We would like to reiterate that we did not pressure Ms. Kim Sae-ron to pay damages, etc.”

About actress Seo Ye-ji, an actress formerly signed under Gold Medalist, the agency said, “On March 17, Garosero Research Institute claimed false facts based on an anonymous informant that our company colluded with the media to slander Seo Ye-ji. The content was a false claim based on an anonymous informant, and the manager who was in charge of Seo Ye-ji at the time, who has now left the company, contacted us in shock. We ask that you stop spreading false facts without any basis or responsibility.”

“In addition, the bereaved family is claiming many false facts about Gold Medalist and Kim Soo-hyun. For example, the bereaved family claimed that our company did not come to the deceased's funeral. However, on February 17 and 19, 2025, we visited the deceased's funeral and met the bereaved family in person to pay our respects and leave a wreath and condolence money,” it said. 

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The wreath from Gold Medalist at Kim Sae-ron's wake (Gold Medalist)

Kim Sae-ron’s family earlier demanded Kim Soo-hyun to admit he dated her when she was a minor and issue an apology. 

The YouTube channel also uploaded another photo of Kim Sae-ron with a man that came from a June 2017 Instagram post of a Kim Sae-ron fan. 

The agency said the YouTube channel claimed “that Kim Soo-hyun dated Kim Sae-ron when she was a minor based on a photo posted on June 23, 2017 on a SNS account created by a fan of Kim Sae-ron. However, the person in the photo is not Kim Soo-hyun, but someone else. Garosero Research Institute claimed that the clothes worn by the person in the photo are similar to products Kim Soo-hyun advertised in the past. However, the clothes in the photo and the clothes Kim Soo-hyun advertised are products of different brands.”

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(Photo from Gold Medalist)Hoverlab17.jpg

The man with Kim Sae-ron is not Kim Soo-hyun, according to Gold Medalist (Photo from Sae Ron Daily on Instagram)

“As the photos posted on the fan account became a hot topic, we do not think it is necessary for us to respond to groundless suspicions made with photos that cannot even confirm the face. However, the bereaved family, based on this photo that does not even show his face, made a new claim that Kim Soo-hyun frequently visited the apartment where Kim Sae-ron lived with her family when she was a minor and secretly met when her family was not around. Kim Soo-hyun has never been to the place that Garosero Research Institute personally visited and said, ‘This very elevator.’ It was Garosero Research Institute, not Kim Soo-hyun, who went there,” Gold Medalist said. 

It added, “The bereaved family even disclosed Kim Soo-hyun’s private life without permission, citing the fact that he mentioned an ‘aunt who is closer to his real aunt.’ Nevertheless, Kim Soo-hyun has never made any claims that he frequently visited Kim Sae-ron’s family’s house when he was a minor or secretly met them. However, the bereaved family suddenly started making such claims when the fan account’s photo became known. We ask that you stop framing all other non-existent lies based on a single photo that has nothing to do with the essence of the incident or a single post found online.” 

 

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