Kim Soo-hyun's 2016 Messages Were Not His, Police Reportedly Found After a Year

Police investigating the 2016 messenger conversation that fueled underage-dating allegations against actor Kim Soo-hyun have reportedly concluded that he was not the sender. After forensic work on several of the late Kim Sae-ron's phones, investigators found the real name of another entertainer, referred to only as A, in the original chat.

The finding arrives a year after Kim Soo-hyun was mocked for presenting a private analysis of the messages, and it shifts the focus of the case from the actor to those who circulated the screenshots.

How the allegation began

The controversy started in March last year, when Kim Se-ui, head of the YouTube channel Garosero Research Institute (Gasaeyeon), claimed that Kim Soo-hyun had dated Kim Sae-ron for six years. He also said her death was linked to pressure from the actor's side over a debt. His main evidence was a messenger record in which Kim Soo-hyun supposedly wrote to her in 2016 that he missed her and wanted to hold her.

Kim Soo-hyun responded at a press conference, saying the messages had been manipulated and that the two only dated after she became an adult in 2019. He wept as he spoke. His side submitted a private analysis comparing the 2016 chat with conversations from 2018 and 2025, which concluded they involved different people. Public opinion did not move, and the analysis drew mockery, including a nickname that jokingly cast him as running a national KakaoTalk research institute. He then asked police to investigate.

What the forensics reportedly showed

Investigators recovered data from Kim Sae-ron's iPhone 7, iPhone 8, iPhone SE and iPhone 13 mini. They found no evidence of a relationship with Kim Soo-hyun. On the iPhone 7, used in 2017 and 2018, there were only three calls between them, and she was the caller. Police reportedly found that she kept close relationships with at least four other men in that period, and that Kim Soo-hyun was not among them. Conversations with family and acquaintances rarely mentioned him.

Her cloud storage held close to 200 saved KakaoTalk screenshots, most showing the sender's name. About a dozen displayed the other party as "unknown," including the 2016 chat. Police compared those with the named screenshots and found A's real name in the original conversation, where Kim Sae-ron herself called the name at least twice.

Speech patterns pointed the same way. A follows spelling and spacing rules and writes verb endings correctly, while Kim Soo-hyun often breaks them and uses different onomatopoeia. In other chats, A also mentioned colleagues who had no connection to Kim Soo-hyun.

Edits, indictment and the photo timeline

Police found that Kim Se-ui received 11 screenshots of the 2016 conversation from the bereaved family, with the other party shown as "unknown." The name was changed to Kim Soo-hyun and a profile photo was added, across seven edits in total. A Gasaeyeon staffer reportedly told police the name change was Kim's order. Kim Sae-ron did not register Kim Soo-hyun's number until October 2017.

The voice file released last May was judged to be AI-manipulated, and the claim that Kim Soo-hyun's side tried to kill a tipster was concluded to be false. Photos and videos Gasaeyeon spread were all taken after 2019, when she was a university student, which matches the actor's account of an adult relationship.

Kim Se-ui was detained and indicted on charges including defamation under the information and communications network act, and violations of sexual violence and anti-stalking laws. The arrest warrant application said he spread "extremely provocative content over a long period," causing Kim Soo-hyun image damage that is hard to repair. A lawyer for the bereaved family was also booked for allegedly taking an active part in handing over materials and holding the press conference.

Prosecutors reportedly found that Kim aired the underage-dating claims more than 25 times and earned 115 million won in ad revenue and 54.4 million won in donations, 169.4 million won in total. The findings are from police and prosecution accounts, and the case is now before a court.