Among the actors Park Sung Hoon‘s suffering from the controversy over the spread of AV photos, the script reading for his next drama, ‘The Tyrant’s Chef’, in which he is starring, has been canceled, becoming a hot topic.

On the 2nd, a media outlet reported that the production team for the new tvN drama ‘The Tyrant‘s Chef’ (directed by Jang Tae Yoo) postponed the date of the script reading that was scheduled for that day. Afterwards, suspicions arose that it was due to the controversy over the spread of Park Sung Hoon’s AV photos, but tvN dismissed it, saying, “We adjusted the script reading schedule considering the social atmosphere of the national mourning period.”

On December 30th of last year, Park Sung Hoon posted an AV cover parodying ‘Squid Game’ on his SNS account, then deleted it at the speed of light. However, the post had already spread like wildfire through online communities, and it was shocking as it contained numerous scenes of women‘s nude bodies and sexual intercourse.

Afterwards, BH Entertainment, the agency, apologized, saying, “Park Sung Hoon was receiving so many DMs (direct messages) on social media that he accidentally uploaded it while checking his DMs. He was so surprised and is so sorry for making such a mistake in these times. He will be careful not to let something like this happen again.”

However, as suspicions continued as to why he had it, a BH Entertainment official provided a secondary explanation, saying, “We received the AV cover in question via DM. We judged it to be problematic, so we downloaded the photo in the process of forwarding it to the company representative. We should have saved it, sent it to the representative, and deleted it right away, but it was uploaded by mistake.”

However, since the explanation that it was uploaded by mistake was unclear, suspicions did not go away. In this situation, some are even saying that lead actor Park Sung-hoon should step down from ‘The Tyrant’s Chef’, which is why the cancellation of the script reading is drawing more attention.

Meanwhile, Park Sung-hoon appeared in the Netflix series ‘Squid Game’ Season 2, which was released on the 26th, as a transgender Hyun-joo who is about to undergo gender confirmation surgery. As he is about to have an interview for the drama next week, attention is being paid to how Park Sung-hoon will explain the series of events.

Reporter Lee Seul-bi, Donga.com misty82@donga.com