Ko Young-wook targets Lee Sang-min over expensive watch for second straight day

Ko Young-wook, a former member of the K-pop group Rula, has brought up ex-bandmate Lee Sang-min's expensive watch for the second straight day.

On Tuesday, Ko wrote on his X (formerly Twitter) account: "He used to show off a 200 million won watch on his own YouTube channel, but as soon as I posted about it on X, he quickly deleted the video — so where is that watch hidden away now?" Ko also shared a screenshot of a video titled "Lee Sang-min, who said he would give a 200 million won watch to a trainee."

On Monday, Ko attached a link to a YouTube Shorts clip from JTBC's "Knowing Bros" in which Seo Jang-hoon speculates about the price of Lee's Rolex watch, writing alongside it: "It must be itching to hide your true nature."

Neither post mentioned Lee by name directly.

Ko made similar remarks in March, sharing a screenshot of Lee's YouTube channel and writing: "If you were lucky enough to earn money beyond your means with the single concept of paying off debts on TV, you shouldn't be buying a 200 million won ($144,000) watch, luxury bags worth over 100 million won, and drinking 5 million won Yangju while showing off — you should donate that money instead."

On Aug. 5, Ko also said Lee's actual birth year is 1974, claiming that an attempt to register him a year early in the family registry as born in 1973 resulted in an error that recorded him as born in 1975.

When Lee received the grand prize at last year's SBS Entertainment Awards, Ko shared an article expressing a negative view of the selection. Ko wrote: "When someone who is neither entertaining nor sincere claimed to have paid off nearly 7 billion won in debt, I found myself wondering why I live like this — I felt quite powerless."

Ko was arrested in 2013 on charges of sexually assaulting and molesting minors and served two years and six months in prison. He was also sentenced to three years of electronic monitoring, becoming the first entertainer to wear an ankle bracelet, and was expelled from the entertainment industry.