Actor Lee Gye-in reveals he was deceived into a fraudulent marriage 30 years ago

Actor Lee Gye-in has opened up about being the victim of a fraudulent marriage more than 30 years ago.

On Friday, Lee appeared on the YouTube channel "Geurigura" and recounted the full story of his failed marriage in 1992.

At the time, Lee held a wedding ceremony with a woman and began living together as a married couple. Shortly after the wedding, however, it emerged that his wife had a live-in partner she had been with for more than a decade. She had pursued the marriage with Lee while maintaining that relationship — a deliberate deception.

Lee delayed registering the marriage with authorities, trusting his then-wife's word. As a result, he avoided significant financial loss by never completing the legal registration. But the absence of a legal marriage made it difficult to pursue criminal charges — a source of lingering resentment for him.

"If I had completed the legal marriage registration, they would have been put in handcuffs," Lee said. "I was deeply relieved to have protected my assets, but the bitterness of not being able to hold them properly accountable has never really gone away."

When host Kim Gu-ra suggested that a marriage can fail and that with time one might look back with a rueful smile, Lee pushed back. "A marriage can fail — that's one thing," he said. "But being deceived is an entirely different matter. No matter how many years pass, this is not something I can ever laugh off."

Lee remarried in 1997 to a woman 10 years his junior, but that marriage also ended in divorce. Last year, he revealed through a television program that he had married for a third time.