Actress Hwang Jung-eum has opened up about her past relationship with SG Wannabe member Kim Yong-jun, telling fans she still misses the singer she dated publicly for nine years.
The confession came in a video titled “A Day of Rapid-Fire Questions From the Hwanggums,” uploaded to her personal YouTube channel on October 21. When a subscriber asked whether she had ever run into Kim since their 2015 breakup, Hwang answered, “Not even once. I kind of miss Yong-jun, too.” She went on, “Yong-jun is a friend with so many good memories. He’s the kind of friend I could greet warmly if we ran into each other on the street,” according to reports by TenAsia and Herald Business.
Asked what year she would return to if she could turn back time, Hwang picked 2015, before her marriage. “It was a shining time as an actress, and many people sought me out, so I’d want to go back then,” she said.
The actress also laid bare her current financial situation. Asked about her income, she said it was “zero won,” adding, “It’s the first time since I was 26 that I haven’t earned money, so I was very flustered and scared.” To cover living expenses, she sold gold — including gold received at her sons’ first-birthday parties — and canceled her insurance policies. “I’m getting by somehow,” she said.
Hwang and Kim began dating publicly in 2006 and became one of the entertainment industry’s representative long-term couples, even appearing together on MBC’s “We Got Married” in 2009 before splitting in 2015. Hwang married businessman and former professional golfer Lee Young-don in 2016 and had two sons; the couple divorced in 2024, and she is now raising the children on her own.
In a separate legal matter, Hwang was indicted for embezzling 4.34 billion KRW from a family company in which she held a 100 percent stake, with some of the funds reportedly used for cryptocurrency investments. In September last year, a court sentenced her to two years in prison, suspended for four years, and she repaid the full amount. She has not taken on a new acting project since the 2024 SBS drama “The Escape of the Seven: Resurrection,” and remains best known for hits including “Secret” and “Kill Me, Heal Me.”
Despite her hiatus, Hwang said she has not given up on acting — she has written down her dream of winning an acting grand prize for 13 straight years. Her candid YouTube confessions keep drawing wide attention, though TenAsia noted her private-life stories are currently eclipsing her acting career.
