Kim Ji-yeon opens up about divorce from Jung Chul-won in emotional letter to her son

Kim Ji-yeon posted a lengthy letter to her son on SNS on August 20, describing what her marriage to professional baseball player Jung Chul-won cost her—and cost him.

They married in December. Within a month, it was over. Kim's legal representative has claimed Jung committed violence, suspected infidelity, and failed to pay living expenses and child support. Kim gave birth to their son in 2024; he is approaching his second birthday.

"From when you were in my belly until after you were born, you were always my weakness and a means of coercion," she wrote. She called the experience "terrible." There were days she was "dying with only breath left." Days she resented her son for crying without rest. Days she briefly considered giving him up, a thought she now calls "a foolish misconception."

Then came the moment that changed everything. She went to say a final goodbye to him. "When I saw you smiling at me as I said a final goodbye with a puffy face, I realized what a poor mother I was, and so I held you again."

She closed with a promise: "No matter how difficult the paths I walked to protect you, I would hold you in my arms the same way even if I had to turn back hundreds of millions of times." (That line is going to wreck people.)

Kim first came to public attention through the Mnet dating reality show Love Catcher in 2019, before going public with Jung Chul-won.