Former KBS announcer sold baby's gold rings, worked dawn delivery shifts after leaving broadcaster

Kim Seon-geun, a 42-year-old broadcaster and former KBS announcer, revealed that after leaving the network he made ends meet by putting up banners, doing dawn delivery runs and hauling laundry.

Kim appeared on KBS 1TV's morning talk show "Achim Madang" on Monday alongside his wife, Lee Yun-mi. Looking around the studio, he grew visibly emotional. "I never realized what a wonderful place this was," he said.

Kim said he left KBS after 10 years at the broadcaster and has now been away for just over four years.

He said financial pressures drove his decision to quit. "KBS employees can get loans easily. I made a big investment that failed," he said, adding that winning an apartment subscription lottery had also created a sudden need for a large sum of money.

"I didn't quit without a plan — I had everything mapped out in advance," he said. "But things didn't go as planned. Three months in, the work had dried up."

At the time, his wife was a full-time homemaker raising their two daughters. With Kim struggling to find freelance work and their cash flow cut off, the couple found themselves with no financial cushion and facing immediate hardship.

"As a housewife, the only credit I could access was a card loan," Lee said. "I kept drawing on it, and the debt grew to 89 million won ($66,800)."

The couple held on as long as they could before eventually selling their children's first-birthday gold rings.

"At first I just lamented why nothing was working out, but my wife pulled me back on my feet," Kim said. He described working through the night so he would still be available for daytime event bookings — hanging banners, doing dawn deliveries, picking up laundry runs and sorting at a logistics center. "The physical exhaustion was fine," he said. "But there were moments that really got to me — security guards cursing me out during laundry pickups in the early hours, and once I nearly dozed off at the wheel and hit a median barrier."

"Even now I still go out at night to put up banners for local festivals," he said.

Lee said she had not known at first that her husband was working through the night. "He can't even drink, but every night he'd say he had plans and head out — I got suspicious and asked him," she said. "That's when he finally told me. I felt so guilty lying there warm with the kids while he was out there."

That guilt pushed Lee to re-enter the workforce after a 10-year career break. A former bank employee, she said her confidence had taken a hit after a decade away. "I sent out a lot of applications and failed a lot of interviews," she said. "When I left the bank I had a social welfare certificate, but I never thought I'd use it — and now I'm working at a social welfare foundation."

Lee recalled asking during her interview at the foundation, "Where does someone like me even start?" She said the interviewers seemed to sense her desperation. "In about a month it'll be my first anniversary there. I'm just grateful to have somewhere to go when I wake up," she said.

The couple told viewers: "Life doesn't go the way you want — so much of it is out of your hands. That's just how life is, and we're pushing through it."