‘Delete It Permanently’: Kim Soo-hyun Orders YouTube to Shut Down the Channel That Fabricated His Scandal

After police confirmed the evidence against him was faked with AI, the cleared actor is moving to erase the Garosero Research Institute channel and its 30 videos from the internet for good.

For nearly two years, actor Kim Soo-hyun (김수현) watched a YouTube channel build an entire narrative around him one that police have now declared a fabrication, stitched together with AI-manipulated audio and doctored messages. This week, with his name formally cleared, Kim stopped defending and went on the offensive. His legal team has asked YouTube to do something it rarely does: delete an entire channel.

The request: not just videos, but the whole channel

On October 20, JoongAng Ilbo reported that Kim Soo-hyun’s side formally petitioned YouTube on October 6 to shut down the channel Garosero Research Institute (가로세로연구소, commonly shortened to “Gaseyeon”). The grounds cited were a violation of YouTube’s Harassment and Cyberbullying Policy a framework the platform uses to police coordinated targeting, doxxing, and sustained abuse of individuals.

Kim’s attorney, Ko Sang-rok of the law firm Pil, didn’t mince words. “It has been confirmed through investigation that Gaseyeon defamed and threatened Kim Soo-hyun based on false evidence, including AI-manipulated audio,” he said, demanding the channel be “shut down swiftly to eradicate secondary harm.” Separately, Kim’s team asked YouTube to remove 30 specific videos about the actor.

The phrase “secondary harm” (2차 피해) is doing heavy lifting here, and it’s worth unpacking for global readers. In Korean media and legal discourse, it refers to the renewed damage a victim suffers each time false or harmful content is re-shared, re-uploaded, and recirculated. Kim’s camp is arguing that as long as the videos remain live and searchable, the harm is ongoing not a historical event, but a continuous one.

How the case collapsed and who was actually behind it

The man at the center of the channel, YouTuber Kim Se-eui (김세의), was indicted and detained in June 2026 on charges including defamation through the dissemination of false information, under Korea’s Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization. Prosecutors allege he spread false claims about Kim Soo-hyun through Gaseyeon from March to December of last year. He remains in custody and is standing trial.

The core allegation was explosive: that Kim Soo-hyun, an adult at the time, had been in a relationship with the late actress Kim Sae-ron (김새론) beginning when she was a minor. Police concluded the claim was false and the way they got there reads like a forensic thriller.

According to investigation results reported on October 13, the KakaoTalk messages presented as proof were fabricated. The most damning line attributed to Kim a 2016 message allegedly asking Kim Sae-ron “when can I hug and sleep with you?” was never sent by him at all. Forensic analysis traced the true sender to a different celebrity, identified only as “Mr. A.” Investigators reportedly examined Kim Sae-ron’s phone and other devices, reviewed roughly 200 cloud-stored KakaoTalk screenshots, and identified Mr. A through his habitual spelling and grammar patterns. Police say the sender’s identity was manipulated to make the messages appear to come from Kim Soo-hyun. They also found that Kim Sae-ron only saved his number in October 2017, with just three calls exchanged during the relevant period.

Police had earlier stated that Kim Se-eui used AI to manipulate Kim Sae-ron’s voice and fabricated the KakaoTalk exchanges the exact “false evidence” Kim’s attorney now cites in the takedown request. It’s a striking detail of the 2026 media landscape: this isn’t a case of misquoting or spin, but of synthetic media deployed as a weapon against a real person.

Why the channel takedown matters more than a lawsuit

Kim Soo-hyun has already filed a reported 12-billion-won (roughly $8–9 million USD) damages suit, and his agency, Gold Medalist, has issued stern warnings promising legal action against anyone who re-shares the debunked claims. But the demand to delete the entire channel is a different kind of move and arguably the more consequential one.

Lawsuits punish after the fact. A channel deletion attacks the distribution infrastructure itself. As long as Gaseyeon stays online, the fabricated narrative remains one search away, and every re-upload reseeds the “secondary harm” Kim’s team is trying to end. This is the modern reality of reputational damage: the court of law may deliver a verdict, but the algorithm never stops serving the content. By targeting the platform’s own policy enforcement rather than relying solely on the courts, Kim is trying to pull the story out at the root.

There’s defiance on the other side, too. At a pretrial hearing in mid-October, Kim Se-eui requested bail and reportedly signaled he would continue his YouTube activity if released a stance prosecutors opposed outright. That posture is precisely why Kim’s camp is pressing YouTube directly: a verdict could take months, but the content is live now.

A career interrupted and a comeback underway

It’s worth remembering the scale of what was put at risk. Kim Soo-hyun is one of Korea’s most bankable stars, the face of era-defining hits like My Love from the Star (별에서 온 그대), It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (사이코지만 괜찮아), and Queen of Tears (눈물의 여왕) the latter one of tvN’s highest-rated dramas ever. At the height of the controversy, endorsements evaporated and projects stalled, a vivid illustration of how fragile a top-tier Korean star’s commercial standing can be when scandal strikes, regardless of the truth.

Now that the investigation has cleared him the Child Welfare Act case against him was closed with a “no charges” decision Kim has resumed activities and shifted fully into offense. The sequence is deliberate: clear the name, then dismantle the machinery that built the lie.

The outcome of the YouTube request is far from guaranteed; platforms are historically reluctant to delete entire channels, and the policy process is opaque. But the case may become a reference point for how public figures fight AI-fabricated defamation in the streaming age. Kim Soo-hyun’s message is unambiguous: a correction isn’t enough. He wants the record and the channel that falsified it erased.