Nearly a Decade After Leaving the Spotlight, Gary Says He Could Live in Bangkok

Gary, the rapper who built his reputation with hip-hop duo Leessang and spent years as a cast member on Running Man, posted a small update on social media recently that caught the attention of fans who have been following him from a distance: a series of photos from a family trip to Bangkok, captioned with the thought that he could see himself living there.

For an artist who walked away from public life in 2016, it's one of the more candid glimpses he has offered in years.

The photos show Gary in Bangkok with his wife and their son, Hao, visiting a mix of street-level neighborhoods and tourist sites around the Thai capital. What drew particular attention from followers was how much Hao has grown since his last public appearances. The boy, now nearly as tall as his father's shoulder, had previously appeared alongside Gary on KBS2's Superman Returns in 2021, which remains Gary's last broadcast appearance to date.

Earlier this year, in March, Gary also attended a parents' open-class day at Hao's school, a detail that surfaced briefly on social media and reinforced the picture of someone who has made family the organizing principle of his post-entertainment life.

Gary married his wife, who is ten years his junior, in 2017, the same year Hao was born. The marriage came roughly a year after he quietly wound down his activities in the industry, a decision that at the time surprised fans given how visible he had been. Beyond his work with Leessang, whose catalog placed them among the more commercially successful acts in Korean hip-hop during the late 2000s and early 2010s, Gary had become a household name through Running Man, the long-running variety show where he was a fixture for years.

The Bangkok post doesn't announce any concrete plans, and the caption reads more like a passing thought than a declaration. Still, for someone who has said very little publicly in nearly a decade, even a sentence carries some weight.