Baek Ji-young has spoken frankly about why she stayed beside her husband, actor Jung Suk-won, after his drug case, saying the decision came down to trust in the person she knew rather than excusing what he did.
The conversation took place in a video posted on October 31 to Baek’s YouTube channel, in which the couple talked about their married life with veteran actress Sunwoo Yong-yeo. Both TenAsia and Xports News covered the video on November 1, with the two reports agreeing on the core exchange: a candid look back at a difficult start to the marriage, and a present-day account of a couple who say they have come through it.
According to TenAsia, Baek said the first three years of the marriage contained just about every kind of trouble a couple can face. Jung did not shy away from his part in that period, saying he had been drifting at the time. “I learned the joy of loving and the joy of giving through this person,” he said of his wife, adding that he had caused trouble early in the marriage but that having gone through those troubles already left them happy now.
Sunwoo, listening to the couple, offered the kind of blunt encouragement that only a senior can get away with. TenAsia reported that she told them that trouble tends to arrive around the tenth year of a marriage, and that at thirteen years, that phase was over. “From now on, you will live well,” she told them. She also urged them to keep respecting each other, advising Jung to support his wife from behind and Baek to acknowledge and lift up her husband.
The most quoted part of the conversation was Baek’s answer to a perception she said she hears often: that she simply embraced her husband when he did wrong. “People keep saying that when Suk-won did wrong, I embraced him,” she said, according to both reports. “If he had originally been that kind of person, I might have turned away too.” Her point, she explained, was that she knew what kind of person he normally was, and that knowledge shaped her response. “Because I know what kind of person he usually is, when he did wrong, I thought, ‘This is when I should embrace him,’” she said.
Sunwoo agreed with that framing. “Because you know his roots,” she said, in TenAsia’s account, endorsing Baek’s explanation that trust, rather than indifference to the wrongdoing, held the marriage together.
The conversation also touched on lighter territory. The reports describe the couple discussing their daily married life, including sleeping arrangements that drew a scolding from Sunwoo, and a question from Baek about how much appearance matters in a marriage. Sunwoo answered that appearance reflects the heart, saying that you can tell from a person’s eyes whether they love you, and that someone can come to look more handsome over years together as affection grows.
To understand why this conversation drew attention, it helps to lay out the timeline the reports themselves recount. Baek and Jung married in 2013, and they have a daughter, Ha-im, born in 2017. In 2018, Jung was sent to trial over drug use and received a sentence of ten months in prison, suspended for two years. That sentence was upheld on appeal in 2019. After a period of self-reflection, he returned to the stage in 2024 through theatre. The October 31 video, then, is not a new statement about the case itself, but a thirteenth-year reflection in which both partners revisit the early troubles and describe them as something already lived through, not something still unfolding.
That distinction matters for how the story should be read. Neither report presents Baek as announcing a new decision or Jung as addressing a fresh allegation. What is new is the couple choosing, together and on camera, to talk about the marriage in those terms: early trouble, a husband who says he wandered, a wife who says she stayed because she trusted the person underneath the mistake, and a senior colleague telling them the hardest stretch is behind them.
No new project, statement, or announcement from either Baek or Jung was reported alongside the video. For now, the conversation stands on its own as a rare, joint public reflection from a couple whose marriage has been discussed in public for years, told this time in their own words and on their own channel.
