Seoul police have acknowledged dragging their feet on cases tied to the YouTube channel Hover Lab and its chief, Kim Se-eui ― and say a dedicated task force is now in place to speed things up.
At a regular press briefing, Seoul Metropolitan Police Commissioner Park Jeong-bo said multiple units had been handling separate Kim-related complaints, which slowed the process. “We’ve consolidated the cases under a focused investigation team so the work can move faster,” he said, adding that the department will proceed “fairly and by the book.”
Of 21 cases involving Kim, 16 have been reassigned to a newly created concentrated investigation team within Gangnam Police Station’s Investigative Division 3. The unit is consolidating overlapping allegations from different complainants and prioritizing matters that have seen little progress.
Five cases connected to actor Kim Soo-hyun will remain with the existing Gangnam team. Those investigations are already well advanced, Park noted, with seized materials sent to the National Forensic Service for analysis ― making a team switch unnecessary at this stage.
The task-force move follows mounting criticism over alleged slow-walking. At a National Assembly hearing on Sept. 30, YouTuber Eun Hyun-jang testified that 16 to 20 Kim-related cases were sitting at Gangnam Police with virtually no movement.
(SBS Entertainment News | Kang Kyung-youn)