Former KBS announcer and broadcaster Lee Hye-seong has opened up about being bullied at school, saying her middle school years were so painful that she could barely endure them. She shared the experience in a video posted October 30 to her YouTube channel, “Lee Hye-seong’s 1% Book Club,” offering comfort to others going through similar pain.
In the video, titled “You Cannot Be Loved by Everyone” (translated), Lee reviewed the bestseller “The Courage to Be Disliked” and spoke about the wounds people can suffer inside a community. “There are times when a community, as an entity, hurts me. Of course there are times when a group bullies me and makes things hard,” she said, according to Sports Seoul. She added that in those moments, the most important realization is that the community in question is not the only place one belongs.
Lee then spoke from personal experience. Using school bullying as an example, she said she understood how unbearable it can feel when someone is bullied or unable to make friends. “I went through it too,” she said. She stressed that simply knowing a bigger world exists outside school can itself be a source of strength, and that the pain felt at school can later be seen as a small, passing hardship.
Her message to those currently suffering was direct: if a group is causing unbearable pain, it is not their fault, and they are allowed to cut ties with that group and find another one where they fit. “You are such a valuable person that you do not need to stay in such a worthless group. You can go to a better-fitting group and be happy there,” she said, urging listeners never to make a choice that harms themselves.
Looking back on her own school days, Lee said she did not have that perspective as a middle school student. “In middle school, I could not think like this. There was no adult who told me this, and I had not read books like this. So the situation was so painful and hard,” she said. Her confession comes as bullying allegations involving actress Cha Ye-ryun have surfaced in the news, drawing renewed attention to school bullying in the entertainment world.
Lee, a Seoul National University graduate, began her broadcasting career as part of KBS’s 43rd class of announcers in 2016 and went freelance in 2020. Through her book club channel, she regularly shares reflections on books and life, and this latest video struck a chord precisely because it paired a familiar self-help title with a personal story she had not told before. For viewers carrying their own school memories, her closing thought was simple: the group that hurts you is not the whole world, and leaving it is not a failure.
