[HanCinema's News] U-Know Unknown to Be Victim Or Perpetrator of Gaslighting
By William Schwartz | Published on
Among the many accusations leveled against Seo Yea-ji over the past week, the claim that she had a romantic relationship with her "The Night Watchman's Journal" co-star U-Know and that the two united to make staff for that drama miserable would seem to be one of the more explosive ones. Yet U-Know's agency has been quiet on the matter, with most publications ignoring the story following its initial release. Ultimately, ambiguity regarding U-Know's actual culpability has put the story on the backburner.
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Part of this is due to the seeming similarity between U-Know's behavior on the set of "The Night Watchman's Journal" and Kim Jung-hyun's behavior on "Time - Drama" in 2018. In both cases, the actors became hostile to the idea of being touched. But where Kim Jung-hyun only expressed this annoyance regarding co-stars, U-Know expressed it to the makeup crew. This made it quite difficult for them to do their job.
The implied motive in both cases was Seo Yea-ji's jealousy, which she has denied with Kim Jung-hyun and not addressed with U-Know which in part explains the latter's silence. There is no need for him to explain or justify his actions if Seo Yea-ji is also not addressing them. Additionally, no concrete proof has been offered that Seo Yea-ji and U-Know were ever in a relationship, let alone abused staff. With Kim Jung-hyun, there were texts and both actors acknowledged the secret relationship.
The final reason why this apparent scandal hasn't been more of an issue for U-Know is that he simply isn't in the right media sphere for it to matter to his career right now. U-Know's last acting project was "Melo Holic" back in 2017. Since then he has focused on his musical career. While drama fans and K-pop fans have some overlap, a complete absence of any improper behavior from U-Know in the better known part of his fandom makes it more difficult to maintain outrage against him.
Written by William Schwartz
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Staff writer. Has been writing articles for HanCinema since 2012, having lived in South Korea from 2011 to 2021. He is currently located in the Southern Illinois. William Schwartz can be contacted via william@hancinema.net, and is open to requests for content in future articles.