South Korean police are seeking an arrest warrant for YouTuber Kim Se-ui after investigators concluded he faked evidence that defamed actor Kim Soo-hyun.
Authorities allege Kim Se-ui manipulated screenshots of text messages and shared an audio file made with AI to give the impression that Kim Soo-hyun had dated actress Kim Sae-ron when she was still a minor.
The allegations first surfaced last year, shortly after Kim Sae-ron killed herself at the age of 24, and were amplified online by a YouTuber with nearly a million followers who posted a voice recording and message screenshots claiming the actress had been dating Kim Soo-hyun since middle school.
Police now say the voice recording was generated by AI and that the screenshots were manipulated to appear as messages sent from Kim Sae-ron's phone to Kim Soo-hyun. Investigators also allege Kim Se-ui knowingly spread the false claims for financial gain.
Those allegations, a police filing says, devastated Kim Soo-hyun's public standing and professional life: the filing reported that the actions "collapsed Kim Soo-hyun's social base and his economic activities across the board, and destroyed the basis for his professional survival." The filing also says Kim Soo-hyun is still receiving psychiatric treatment.
Kim Soo-hyun has consistently denied the allegations. At a press conference in March 2025 he said they had never dated while she was underage, and he has insisted in public statements, "I can't admit to something I didn't do."
The sequence of posts that prompted the police action began months after Kim Sae-ron's death, when Kim Se-ui published an online voice recording in which the actress could be heard saying she had been dating Kim Soo-hyun since she was in middle school, and screenshots purportedly showing texts between the two.
Kim Se-ui has rejected the police account, posting a video in which he called the authorities' allegations a "subterfuge meant to disrupt his investigation." That contrast between the police finding of fabrication and the YouTuber's insistence he was exposing wrongdoing is now at the center of the case.
Background details in the timeline include a 2022 incident in which Kim Sae-ron was fined for drink-driving and the online rumours that, after her death, alleged Kim Soo-hyun had dated her when she was 15. Kim Soo-hyun's agency initially denied the couple had ever dated; he later acknowledged they had dated for a year but said it was only when she was an adult.
The police move to seek an arrest warrant for Kim Se-ui is the clearest formal step yet to convert online accusations into a criminal inquiry. Given the investigators' findings that the voice file was generated by AI, that screenshots were manipulated, and that the alleged conduct inflicted broad professional and personal damage on Kim Soo-hyun, the warrant request marks the most concrete effort so far to hold the accuser to account and to address the consequences of the fabricated material.
