Noeul's Kang Gyun-sung Weds on the 30th, Nine Years After Walking Away Over a 14-Year Gap

Noeul's Kang Gyun-sung said on MBC's Radio Star that he and fiancée Yoo Ha-jin have kept to abstinence before marriage, and that she once asked him, "Oh, is there something wrong with you?" The anecdote, from the episode that aired on the 14th, comes two weeks before the couple's wedding on the 30th.

Kang, 45, has spoken about abstinence before marriage for years: he first declared it in 2011, and has long been nicknamed an icon of the practice in Korean entertainment. This time, he said, he wanted to hold to it because he had met the person he planned to marry. Yoo, 31, an actress who once trained as a girl group hopeful, shares the view. "We wanted it for ourselves," he said, adding that rumors of a pre-marital pregnancy had circulated ahead of the wedding, which he denied.

He framed the wait as something to look forward to. People had told him that enjoying too much before the wedding dims the anticipation afterward, he said, and his own was high, calling it a "true honeymoon." Then came the punchline: Yoo had worried aloud that something might be wrong with him, and Kang joked that he needed to "prove it quickly."

A reunion nine years in the making

The two first met about nine years ago, when Kang was 37 and Yoo was 23. They shared a few meals and felt a spark, but Kang said the 14-year age gap weighed on him and he stopped getting in touch. A mutual acquaintance arranged a blind date in mid-February this year, and the person across the table was Yoo. They began dating that month, and the wedding follows roughly eight months later.

Planning around the honeymoon and the proposal

Kang also described how he is structuring the day itself. To stay in top condition for the ceremony and the honeymoon, he scheduled the wedding for 7 p.m. He will also appear on MBN and Channel S's Jun Hyun-moo Plan 4 on the 16th, where he is set to recount the proposal.

By his account, he wanted Yoo to receive it looking her best. He sent her to a salon under a false pretext, then handed her a mini dress he had picked out himself. Friends were enlisted for the surprise, with a furniture shoot used as cover.

Kang debuted in 2002 with the vocal group Noeul. The pair's wedding photos, which he shared on social media earlier this month, suggest the pace of this relationship has matched the speed of its ending.