Company That Forensically Analyzed Kim Soo Hyun’s Text Under Scrutiny As Their Past Practices Get Discovered

Actor Kim Soo Hyun has claimed that some of the KakaoTalk messages exchanged between him and the late actress Kim Sae Ron were fabricated. This has led the public to scrutinize the credibility of the company that analyzed the messages.

On March 31, Kim Soo Hyun held an emergency press conference at a hotel in Sangam-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, where he denied allegations that he had dated Kim Sae Ron when she was a minor.

Kim Sae Ron’s family previously claimed that based on her texts and letters, she had been in a relationship with Kim Soo Hyun since 2015, when she was 15 and he was 27. However, Kim Soo Hyun countered this by stating that their relationship only began in 2019, after she had reached adulthood. This controversy escalated further when affectionate messages allegedly exchanged between Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Sae Ron in 2016 and 2018—such as “Jjok” (a Korean onomatopoeia for a kissing sound) and “When can I fall asleep in your arms?”—were made public.

In response, Kim Soo Hyun stated, “The bereaved family is trying to frame me as a pedophile and as someone who groomed a minor. However, I was not the person exchanging KakaoTalk messages with the deceased in 2016 and 2018. To prove this, I submitted the KakaoTalk records from 2016, 2018, and this year, including my conversations with acquaintances, to an institution specializing in scientific statement analysis. That institution concluded that the individuals in the 2016 and 2018 messages were not by the same person.”

He added, “The family fabricated the KakaoTalk messages. Just because something is presented as fact does not make it true. Just as I underwent verification for these messages, I demand that all evidence presented by the family undergo thorough investigation by law enforcement. If the evidence they hold is truly legitimate, they should submit all materials to the authorities and have them legally verified.”

Despite Kim Soo Hyun’s confident presentation of “scientific evidence,” the public response has been skeptical. The institution that analyzed the messages, Truebaum Statement Analysis Center, is not widely recognized for its credibility. Its representative, Kim Mi Young, holds a doctorate in criminal psychology and has served as a forensic advisory member for the prosecution and an expert on sexual violence cases at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.

However, her past analysis has faced criticism. When she appeared on SBS’s Unanswered Questions to analyze messages from Nth Room criminal Cho Ju Bin, she incorrectly predicted that he was an “intellectual man in his mid-40s.”

The report on Kim Soo Hyun’s KakaoTalk exchanges stated that there was a “92% confidence level” that the persons in the kakaotalk conversations is not the person in the 2016 and 2018 messages. It also acknowledged an “8% margin of error,” meaning the possibility of a mistaken judgment.

Since Truebaum is a private company rather than a state-run institution like the National Forensic Service, the public remains unconvinced about the reliability of Kim Soo Hyun’s KakaoTalk report.

Meanwhile, Kim Soo Hyun has filed a combined 12 billion won lawsuit against the YouTube channel Garo Sero Institute (Gaseyeon) and Kim Sae Ron’s family for defamation.

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