Sung Si-kyung Finally Explains the Viral Photo of Kim Heechul Passed Out Cold

Singer Sung Si-kyung finally put to rest one of Korean celebrity internet's longer-running mysteries on the February 2 episode of SBS variety show My Ugly Duckling (Miun Uri Saekki): the photo of Super Junior's Kim Heechul passed out on a bathroom floor that has circulated online for years.

The explanation came naturally, during a camping segment in which Sung Si-kyung and singer Jo Hyun-ah talked through old stories over drinks. When the conversation turned to Heechul, Sung Si-kyung described the photo matter-of-factly before the show screened it as part of a VCR package. Heechul's mother, watching from the studio, visibly flinched.

According to Sung Si-kyung, the night in question started as a small gathering at his home. TV personality Shin Dong-yup had come over to drink, and Heechul joined later. At some point Heechul excused himself to use the bathroom and simply did not come back. "I kept drinking and having a good time," Sung Si-kyung said, "and after a long while I thought something was off, so I went to check. He had fallen asleep right there in the bathroom." He took the photo and, apparently, it eventually made its way online.

What followed was years of the photo being shared with the implication that Sung Si-kyung had pressured Heechul into drinking far more than he could handle. Sung Si-kyung pushed back on that reading with some care. He noted that Heechul is generally a capable drinker but, for reasons he cannot explain, tends to go down faster whenever the two of them drink together. On the question of forcing drinks on anyone, he was direct: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I have never once forced alcohol on anyone."

The admission that the photo had genuinely bothered him landed with more weight than the joke that followed it. "People look at that photo and assume I'm the one who put him in that state," he said, drawing laughs from the other cast members. Heechul, 43, has been a recurring subject on Korean variety television, but this particular image has a stubborn life online that even his own explanations had not quite extinguished. Hearing Sung Si-kyung recount it in person, with Heechul's mother sitting there working through her own reaction in real time, gave the story a resolution it had been missing.