A man who introduced himself as a drama producer with close ties to top comedian Yoo Jae-suk and Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-yong was exposed on MBC’s investigative program “True Story Expedition” on November 12 as having taken around 500 million won from three women who believed his stories.
According to MHN Sports, which reported on the broadcast, the man claimed that Yoo Jae-suk had hosted his wedding, that his father was a five-star general close to former president Chun Doo-hwan, and that his wife — a war correspondent — had died in a terror attack. He also said he was an alumnus of the same arts university as Yoo, had worked as the late actress Choi Jin-sil’s road manager, and was close to singers Kim Min-jong and Park Jin-young.
The first woman, identified only as A, met the man on a secondhand trading platform. Both were Catholic, and he drew closer by talking about his sick mother. A, a divorced mother raising a child with autism spectrum disorder on her own, said he promised to cherish her child as his own, and she was waiting for the day he would propose. A second woman, B, said she met him the same way and spent three years in an on-and-off relationship with him, even signing a lease on a home they planned to share. A third woman, C, heard the same story about the late war-correspondent wife — but while the man told A he was divorced, he told B and C he was widowed.
The money the women handed over was not small. A gave him 300 million won for filming equipment, B handed over 100 million won as an investment, and C paid more than 100 million won for dump truck repairs — about 500 million won in total. When C went to confront him, the wife he claimed had died opened the door herself. She told the program she had earned all the household money during their 10 to 15 years of marriage and had been deceived herself, adding that her husband had not come home for two years.
The program checked each of his claims and found no record of him working at the broadcaster or production company he named, and Yoo Jae-suk’s representatives said they did not know him. Confronted by the production team, the man did not deny the relationships and said the investment money had been invested but had not worked out. Asked about the story of his wife dying in a terror attack, he admitted, “I made up stories that didn’t exist because I wanted to meet women.” Asked whether he felt sorry for the women, he said, “Of course I’m sorry. I have to resolve it.” A professor of police administration at Soonchunhyang University told the program, “This isn’t love, it’s business.”
The broadcast also reported that the man has a prior prison sentence for a similar fraud, and that in this case a court of first instance sentenced him to six months in prison. He has appealed the sentence, and the three women are pursuing additional charges. The episode had been previewed earlier in the day by several Korean outlets, which reported that the program would trace a man who posed as a drama producer and claimed ties to a conglomerate chairman and celebrities — the broadcast confirmed those claims were false.
With the appeal still pending and further complaints filed, the case is not over — and the program’s warning was plain: a polished resume and a list of famous names are no proof of who someone really is.
