Despite Soo Hyun and his agency denying the accusations, stating they only dated briefly in 2019 when Sae Ron was an adult, the situation remains filled with confusion, blame, and accusations. Amid all this, a linguistic report has been made public. This analysis has raised serious doubts about the authenticity of certain 2016 KakaoTalk messages at the center of the scandal. Experts suggest these messages may have been fabricated, and here’s why.
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Are Kim Soo Hyun’s 2016 messages to Kim Sae Ron fabricated?
On April 9, 2025, the Truebaum Institute released the results of its linguistic analysis, according to KBIZOOM. The team was reportedly commissioned by Kim Soo Hyun’s legal team. According to the research centre, the analysis, known as “author identification,” focuses on whether messages from different years were likely written by the same person. Unlike other methods that simply verify the authenticity of a statement, this approach looks closely at how people write, analysing things like word choice, sentence structure, and style.
Also read: ‘Kim Sae Ron knew Kim Soo Hyun’s girlfriend’: YouTuber claims actor was in a serious relationship, releases new evidence
The analysis compared texts from 2016, 2018, and 2025. The 2025 messages were confirmed to be from Kim Soo Hyun based on real conversations. However, one of the key findings listed by the team suggests that there is a high probability—almost 95%—that the 2016 messages are fabricated. The probability that both sets of messages came from the same person was only 8%. The linguistic experts also compared the 2016 messages with those from 2018. Once again, they found a major difference, with only a 92% chance (a low similarity rate) that both sets of messages were written by the same person. The messages in question included words like, “I want to sleep with you,” “When can I hold you,” “Kisses,” etc.
Soo Hyun’s side is trying to prove that the 2016 messages, which had previously been released by the YouTube channel Garo Sero Institute, might not have been written by him at all. This comes after he publicly requested a formal analysis to verify their authenticity. Fans have long questioned the authenticity of the screenshots released by YouTuber Kim Se Ui and the legal team of Sae Ron’s family after they revealed that the real messages were kept private while a reconstructed version was being shown.
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The development follows just hours after another YouTuber, Lee Jin Ho, who has been warned by Sae Ron’s family and slapped with a lawsuit for defaming the late actor, claimed that in 2016, Kim Soo Hyun was actually dating someone else with whom he had been in a three-year relationship. Meanwhile, Sae Ron was dating someone else and knew about his girlfriend.
