Eighth time lucky: Actor to marry Mongolian after breakup with bhiksuni
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Yoo Toong / Screen capture from YouTube
By Ko Dong-hwan
Korean actor, businessman and self-claimed artist Yoo Toong, 60, is getting married in March ― for the eighth time ― to a Mongolian woman, 27.
Despite decades of failed marriages, Yoo assured in an interview with online news outlet The Fact on Tuesday that “this will be my last marriage.”
“Until now, I have lived upon my fidelity (to former wives) and guts. This time, it’s different,” Yoo said, adding that he is a “little shy and ashamed that my news has grabbed many people’s attention.”
Yoo plans to hold the ceremony in Citizens Park, in the coastal city of Busan where he was born. Comedian friends will host the wedding and perform, according to the city’s local daily.
Yoo, describing his life as similar to that of “an itinerant vendor,” admitted his rambunctious lifestyle “may appear abnormal to many” but “holding the wedding, which I see as a joyous festival, at an open space is the most natural to me.”
Yoo debuted with a movie in 1987 and was active during the 1980s and 1990s in movies and on television.
Yoo’s first marriage, to a Korean woman, was when he was 19. He went on to divorce her three times. They have a son.
Yoo announced he is getting married for the eighth time to a Mongolian woman, above, in March.
In 1995, he made headlines with news he was to marry a bhiksuni – an ordained monastic. He enticed her by saying, “If you renounce Buddhism, I will be your opportunity to reach the spiritual realm of being delivered from worldly existence,” according to an online gossip source.
Yoo broke the promise and, after five years, married a Korean woman 20 years younger than him. At the time, he told women’s magazines he had “met my true love.” He reportedly earned a lot of money by signing up with her for sex toy ads.
At 48, Yoo married his fourth wife, a Mongolian, 15, who gave birth to a daughter. But her mother’s “expensive lifestyle” made him determined to break up, giving up his Mongolian restaurant, car and home.
In 2010, Yoo married a Mongolian woman, who is 33 years younger than him, and they had a daughter. The couple split up but resumed their relationship and will marry in March.
Yoo is well known for revealing on a TV talk show he had earned over 17 million won ($15,000) a day with his rice soup restaurant in Seoul. He also opened an art gallery on Jeju Island that is now derelict.
Yoo was convicted of smoking cannabis in 1997 and 2013.