Kim Soo-hyun cleared as forensic probe finds dating scandal messages were forged

Police forensic investigations have revealed that controversial 2016 KakaoTalk messages previously used to implicate South Korean actor Kim Soo-hyun in an underage dating scandal with the late Kim Sae-ron were forged.

Forensic analysis of Kim Sae-ron’s electronic devices and cloud storage indicates that the sender of the intimate messages was actually another entertainer, referred to as Artist A, rather than Kim Soo-hyun. Investigators found that the original chat logs contained Artist A’s real name, which had been obscured. Furthermore, linguistic analysis showed that the spelling habits and syntax of the messages did not match Kim Soo-hyun’s communication style.

Evidence suggests the sender's name in the original screenshots was listed as ‘Unknown’ before being manually changed to Kim Soo-hyun. Additionally, call records from 2017 and 2018 show that Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Sae-ron only had three phone calls, all initiated by Kim Sae-ron. The investigation concludes that the messages were manipulated to frame Kim Soo-hyun within a narrative of underage exploitation.