On December 7, documentary director Heo Cheol shared a long post on his personal social media, writing, “Since a fistfight with a friend in middle school, I’ve never been hit by anyone as an adult. But in 2014, someone punched me in the face.”
He then stated, “The person who hit me was actor Cho Jin-woong.”
According to Heo Cheol, the assault happened inside a vehicle late at night while several film industry members were traveling together after holding a ritual to pray for the success of another director’s movie.
“He was sitting next to me, and without any reason, he suddenly punched me,” Heo Cheol wrote. “Others tried to stop him, and then he suddenly began to cry. 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 in front of me in embarrassment,” he wrote. He claimed Cho Jin-woong later said he did not remember the incident.
The director said the experience left him traumatized: “Whenever I saw him on screen, I would immediately turn it off. The memory kept coming back, and anger followed.”
Heo Cheol also said colleagues brushed off his complaints with comments like “Why would he do that?”, leaving him feeling isolated.
However, after recently reading news reports about Cho Jin-woong’s controversial past—including juvenile detention for aggravated robbery and sexual assault during high school, a later conviction for assaulting a theater troupe member, and a DUI license cancellation in 2004—Heo Cheol said a surprising sense of empathy emerged.
“For the first time, I thought, ‘So that’s why.’ A feeling of forgiveness surfaced,” he wrote. He criticized the public’s harshness toward Cho Jin-woong following these revelations: “People push someone into retirement with their judgments and finger-pointing. All this time, I only focused on my anger without trying to understand the situation.”
He concluded his post with a message to Cho Jin-woong: “I hope you can return to acting. If we meet again someday, let’s have a drink. Let me slap you once, and we’ll call it even.”
Heo Cheol has since deleted the post.
Actor Cho Jin-woong’s past criminal records and earlier incidents resurfaced recently, causing widespread controversy across the Korean entertainment industry.
Sources: Ten Asia
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