Veteran trot singer Kim Serena has opened up about two failed marriages and the frauds that wiped out her fortune, revealing that the money she lent out and never got back alone amounts to more than 10 billion won.
The confession came on the November 5 broadcast of MBN’s current-affairs program “Field Report: Special Scoop World,” where Kim appeared to mark 60 years since her debut, according to Ilgan Sports. The veteran singer used the appearance to look back on a turbulent personal life that unfolded largely out of the public eye.
Kim said her first marriage ended after she discovered, only after giving birth to their child, that her husband was already married to someone else. She paid alimony and divorced him. Her second marriage, which came 14 years later, ended over her former husband’s gambling and reckless lifestyle.
At the time of her second divorce, Kim said she gave up her entire fortune to keep custody of her second son, a decision she described as a mother’s devotion to her children above all else.
Kim also described the scale of her earnings at the height of her career, and how quickly that money disappeared. “I earned hundreds of millions of won in a single evening, money didn’t feel like money,” she said. She lent hundreds of millions of won at a time to people around her without even writing an IOU. “The money I never got back alone adds up to more than 10 billion won,” she said, describing a string of frauds that left her with nothing.
Kim rose to fame with hit songs such as “Gapdori and Gapsuni” and “Saetaryeong,” and at her peak she was one of the most popular trot singers in Korea, commanding huge fees for performances. The contrast between that stardom and the losses she later suffered is what made her account so striking to viewers of the program.
Now in her 60th year as a singer, Kim has left Seoul behind and is living a quiet life on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province. Her appearance offered a rare, candid look at the personal cost behind a long career in the spotlight, and at how a star who once earned a fortune in a single night ended up starting over with nothing.
