Actor Park Sung-hoon, who was receiving attention for his role as the ‘most outstanding character’ in Netflix‘s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2, accidentally tarnished his image in an instant. His agency’s clumsy response, rather than helping to resolve the situation, only fueled the controversy, and it has reached a point where the sparks have flown to his next work.

The controversy began with a post that Park Sung-hoon uploaded to his personal SNS on the 30th of last month. The post in question was a Japanese AV (pornographic video) cover parodying ‘Squid Game’ that clearly showed naked women in provocative poses. It was deleted immediately, but it quickly spread through various online communities.

Regarding this, his agency BH Entertainment stated, “This post was accidentally uploaded while I was checking DM (direct messages) from an unspecified number of people. The actor explained, ”Even I was surprised and deleted it right away,“ but it only made the controversy bigger.
The basis for this was that, procedurally, it could not be published with a ”single click.“ Netizens were unanimous in saying, ”This is an explanation that assumes the public is an idiot who doesn‘t know how to use social media,“ and they even gave Park Sung-hoon the nickname ”Yadon (pornographic video) Jae-joon,“ a reference to the character (Jeon Jae-joon) he played in ”The Glory.“

When the situation was not resolved, the agency released another explanation the next day, saying, ”It was not a mistake to click.“ The message read, ”After receiving the controversial photo via DM, I judged it to be problematic, so I ‘saved it on my phone’ to send it to the agency representative, and then uploaded it to social media by mistake.“

Meanwhile, as the agency’s poor explanation and the violent content of the AV that Park Sung Hoon ‘Bit-sak’ (deleted like light) spread online, some netizens are even demanding that Park Sung Hoon step down from his next drama, tvN‘s ‘The Tyrant’s Chef’. ‘The Tyrant‘s Chef’ is a fantasy historical drama that depicts the romance between a chef who time-slips to the past and a tyrant, and the fandom of Im Yoon Ah, who plays the other character, is particularly strongly opposed to his appearance.

Amidst the fierce demands for his departure and the heated debate between some fans who support Park Sung Hoon, global interest in Park Sung Hoon is only rapidly increasing. Since the release of Season 2, the number of SNS followers has increased by a whopping 350,000 as of the 1st, and on the 30th, when the AV incident occurred, he recorded the largest increase in followers (over 80,000) since the release of Season 2.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com