Lee Byung-hun in yet another controversy
SEOUL: After a blackmail scandal, Lee Byung-hun has found himself swept up in another cheating controversy. The actor is under the scanner yet again after a video showing the actor getting intimate with another woman in front of his wife surfaced online.
‘The Magnificent Seven’ actor was at a bar in Hong Kong with his wife, Lee Min-jung, for an after party following the 2016 Mnet Asian Music Awards when the incident took place. Video footage shows the actor with his arm around a woman who is clearly not Min Jung. In one of the shots, Byung-hun was also seen giving the unidentified woman a peck on the cheek while his wife was sitting right next to him.
The video quickly went viral on the Internet and became known as the “skinship” controversy, leaving several fans angry over his behaviour as his blackmail scandal surfaced not too long ago. However, the actor’s agency, BH Entertainment issued an official statement saying that the woman in the video is like family to the actor.
“The woman is someone that Lee Byung Hun has been friends with for a very long time,” the agency said in a statement obtained by All KPop. “His wife Lee Min-jung, Han Hyojoo, and more were also present and the two are very close and we believe their expression of friendliness has become a cause of misunderstanding.”
In September 2014, Byunghun was blackmailed by Da Hee and Lee Ji Yeon. The two women asked the actor to pay them 5 billion won (US$4.28 million) otherwise they would leak a video clip of the three of them drinking and making sexually suggestive remarks.
The actor filed a lawsuit against the two blackmailers and the judge ruled in his favour. But even though both women received jail sentences, Byung-hun received a lot of criticism for his behaviour as a married man.