Just Five Weeks In, Aespa’s Karina & Lee Jae-wook Part Ways After Announcing Relationship

You can do a lot of things in five weeks: you can complete a SkillsFuture course, you can visit almost every hawker centre if you eat out every meal or you can finish up the thesis that you’ve been procrastinating for months.

Or you can call it quits after announcing your relationship.

Just Five Weeks In, Aespa’s Karina & Lee Jae-wook Part Ways After Announcing Relationship

If you think that actor Ryu Jun-yeol and actress Han So-hee ending their relationship two weeks after publicly confirming their romance on 30 March was shocking, read on.

Shortly thereafter, Karina from the K-pop group Aespa and actor Lee Jae-wook also announced their breakup five weeks following the acknowledgment of their dating status.

The news of Karina and Lee’s breakup was first reported by South Korean media outlet TenAsia on 2 April, citing the negative comments and their sense of guilt towards their fans as reasons for the decision.

C-JeS Studios, representing Lee Jae-wook, however, stated that Lee ended the relationship to concentrate on his current filming projects and that they would continue to support each other as colleagues.

SM Entertainment, Karina’s agency, also confirmed the breakup.

The couple, Karina, 23, and Lee, 25, made their relationship public on 27 February, following reports by the South Korean publication Dispatch that they were dating. They began their relationship after meeting at the Prada Fall/Winter 2024 men’s collection fashion show in Milan, Italy, on January 14.

Following the announcement of their relationship, fans expressed their dissatisfaction by sending “protest trucks” to SM Entertainment’s headquarters in Seoul, accusing Karina of betraying them and claiming that her dating would damage her career.

It got so serious that Karina had to issue a handwritten apology to her fans on 5 March, stating her regret for any hurt her actions might have caused and expressing her continued commitment to the Aespa fandom, known as MY.

 

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She wrote, “Hello, this is Karina. Firstly, I am sorry for surprising you.”

She then went on to say that she is “aware of how disappointed MYs who have supported her till now must be.”

She added, “Starting now, I want to do a good job filling the places where MYs have been wounded. I have always been sincere towards MYs, and even now, each and every one of you is truly precious to me.”