Ko Ji-yong Files Injunction Against Ex-Wife After Seeing His Son Only 6 Times in 2 Years

Sechskies member Ko Ji-yong has filed an injunction at the Seoul Family Court to stop his ex-wife, family medicine specialist Heo Yang-im, from blocking access to their son and posting images of the child online. The filing, confirmed by Ko's agency Mountain Movement Story on the 16th, comes after what Ko describes as two years of near-total silence from the other side.

Ko last saw his 12-year-old son, Seung-jae, on Children's Day earlier this year. Before that, the formal visitation count since their April 2024 divorce was around six meetings. Brief encounters outside Seung-jae's tutoring academy, Ko clarified, don't count toward that number under the legal standard, so the real total is under ten either way. "The biggest reason I filed," Ko said, "is that I can't see my son."

The illness nobody knew was this serious

What the lawsuit unseals, almost as a footnote, is how bad Ko's health got. Days after the divorce was finalized, he was rushed to hospital in early May 2024 in a state of liver cirrhosis, cirrhotic shock, and organ distress, what he describes as a near-death experience. He then spent the better part of two years cycling in and out of hospital, reaching a stage just short of liver cancer before his condition began to stabilize. Health rumors had circulated before, but the filings make clear those rumors were an understatement.

During that stretch, Ko says Heo Yang-im filed attachments on his bank accounts and insurance policies to enforce overdue child support payments of 1.89 million won per month. By the time the debt was tallied, unpaid principal had reached roughly 40 million won; with interest, the figure sits at approximately 50 million won. Ko's agency argues that a medical specialist who knew her ex-husband was critically ill and still moved to freeze his means of survival was not interested in negotiation. Ko himself says he sent two certified letters offering installment repayment and received no response. Since August this year, he says, payments have resumed regularly.

Two timelines that don't match

The complication is that both sides have now filed. On the 5th of this month, Heo Yang-im's legal team submitted its own injunction application and a formal court petition, alleging Ko failed to pay child support and refused visitation. Ko's camp calls that a reversal of the actual sequence: in their account, direct communication became impossible after Heo retained a lawyer and required all contact to go through legal counsel. Coordinating a school-age child's schedule through attorneys, Ko pointed out, is not how visitation dates get arranged in practice. "The channel disappeared," he said. "That itself is a refusal."

Heo Yang-im has not issued a public statement. On the same day Ko's agency announced the injunction, she posted a video to her YouTube channel, Coque de Heo Yang-im, featuring daily life with Seung-jae, and on the 12th she shared photos from a birthday celebration at her clinic, also with Seung-jae present. Ko's filing specifically targets that kind of content, alleging it violates child protection provisions and amounts to using the child for professional promotion.

From Superman Returns to family court

The couple married in 2013, had Seung-jae in 2014, and built a public image of family warmth through KBS 2TV's parenting variety show Superman Returns. Custody went to Heo Yang-im after the 2024 divorce. Ko's attempt to restart a normal life during recovery included opening a shabu-shabu restaurant in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, with a business partner in 2024; it closed roughly a year later, last September, after the business failed.

Ko says he is recovering now, that his health "is being managed and improving significantly." Whether the legal fight helps or complicates that recovery is a fair question. Mountain Movement Story, for its part, is not framing this as a mediation situation. "The fact that a medical professional who knew the full extent of his illness chose legal seizure over dialogue," the agency said in a statement, "speaks for itself."

The timing is suspicious in the way these things usually are: the lawsuit filings from both sides landed within eleven days of each other, suggesting neither camp expects this to settle quietly.