Director Hong, actress Kim allegedly having affair
Director Hong Sang-soo, left, and actress Kim Min-hee during a press conference for Hong’s film “Right Now, Wrong Then” at the Locarno International Film Festival in Locarno, Switzerland. A local media outlet reported that the two have been having an affair. Hong is married and has a college-age daughter. / Yonhap
By Baek Byung-yeul
Director Hong Sang-soo and actress Kim Min-hee have allegedly been having an affair for about a year, local media reported Tuesday.
The report said the 54-year-old director, who is married and has a college-age daughter, and Kim, who is 22 years younger than him, met last year while filming “Right Now, Wrong Then.” The film, which Hong directed and Kim starred in, won the top-prize Golden Leopard and Best Actor awards at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland last year.
The report said it was Kim who expressed her interest in him first and the two became a couple with her unrelenting efforts to win his heart.
Hong met his wife in the U.S. while studying film and has been married since 1985. The two permanently moved to Korea in 1992. The report added Hong confessed his affair to his family in September and has not been home since.
Regarding the report, both Hong and Kim have not released a statement.
NEW, a film distributor of Hong’s latest film “Yourself and Yours,” also said it has “no information about their private life.”
“Hong’s new film is scheduled to be released later this year, but the date has not been decided yet,” the film distributor said in a statement, adding Kim didn’t appear in Hong’s latest film. Actor Kim Joo-hyuk and actress Lee Yoo-young take lead roles in “Yourself and Yours,” which will be Hong’s 18th film.
Making his directional debut with “The Day a Pig Fell Into a Well” in 1996, Hong has been recognized with his art house films such as “Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” (2000), “Woman Is the Future of Man” (2004) and “Hahaha” (2010).
Kim recently received plaudits in a lead role in director Park Chan-wook’s “The Handmaiden.”