On December 7, documentary filmmaker Heo Cheol shared a lengthy post on his personal social media, writing: “Since I got into a fight with a friend in middle school, I have never been hit by anyone as an adult. But in 2014, someone punched me in the face.”
He then stated: “The person who impressed me was the actor Cho Jin-woong.”
According to Heo Cheol, the attack occurred inside a vehicle late at night while several members of the film industry were traveling together after performing a ritual to pray for the success of another director’s film.
“He was sitting next to me and, for no reason, he suddenly punched me,” Heo Cheol wrote. “Others tried to stop him, and then suddenly he started crying. I had never met him before that night. I was stunned and couldn’t understand what was happening.”
Heo Cheol added that he formally requested an apology through Cho Jin-woong’s manager, but the actor never apologized.
“Only his manager, who had done nothing wrong, knelt down in front of me in embarrassment,” he wrote. He claimed that Cho Jin-woong later said he did not remember the incident.
The director said the experience left him traumatised: “Every time I saw it on the screen, I immediately turned it off. The memory kept coming back, and the anger followed.”
Heo Cheol also said that colleagues dismissed his complaints with comments like “Why would he do that?”leaving him isolated.
However, after recently reading news about Cho Jin-woong’s controversial past—including juvenile detention for aggravated robbery and sexual assault during high school, a subsequent conviction for assaulting a theater crew member, and the cancellation of his DUI license in 2004—Heo Cheol said a surprising sense of empathy emerged.
“For the first time I thought, ‘This is why.’ A feeling of forgiveness emerged,” he wrote. He criticized the public’s harshness towards Cho Jin-woong following these revelations: “People push someone into retirement with their judgments and finger-pointing. All this time, I was just focusing on my anger without trying to understand the situation.”
He concluded his post with a message to Cho Jin-woong: “I hope you can get back to acting. If we meet again someday, let’s have a drink. Let me slap you once and we’ll talk even.”
Heo Cheol has since deleted the post.
Actor Cho Jin-woong’s criminal record and previous incidents have resurfaced recently, causing widespread controversy in the Korean entertainment industry.
Sources: Ten Asia
