Lee Eun Mee Says She Was "Too in Love With Music" to Give Shin Dong-yup Her Number

Seo Jang-hoon claimed that Shin Dong-yup was once turned down while trying to get singer Lee Eun Mee's number at a live club. Lee, for her part, said she remembers seeing Shin but has no memory of him asking for her phone number.

A guest, a hidden husband and an unexpected story

Lee Eun Mee appeared as a special guest on episode 515 of the SBS entertainment show My Little Old Boy, broadcast on the 18th. She talked about married life, how she first met her husband and her past relationships. Her husband, who has kept his private life strictly out of the public eye, had long been shrouded in mystery, and the revelation of his identity drew attention along with the episode involving Shin. The broadcast also offered an extra layer of fun by exposing a past episode in which the two people's memories do not match. One side remembers the disappointment of not getting a number; on the other, devotion to music left the moment hazy. The cheerful story, revealed after so many years, made viewers laugh.

The brother-in-law connection

Seo said many people do not even know that Lee is married. "Surprisingly, a lot of people don't know Eun Mee got married," he said, adding that her husband is "strictly veiled" and that "nobody knows who he is." He said he understood she first met her husband through her current brother-in-law, and asked how the two came together.

Lee answered that Shin knows the man too: "Broadcaster Lee Ki-sang, who started out as a VJ, is my brother-in-law." That made her husband the older brother of Lee Ki-sang, and attention turned to how the two, whose husband rarely appears in public, became a couple.

Lee recalled the time she was preparing her first album. Her agency at the time was putting on a performance by an overseas musician, and Lee Ki-sang came to the venue for a part-time interpreting job. She said she asked him half-jokingly, "I don't like younger guys, so do you have an older brother?" The studio burst into laughter. As time passed, she said, her connection continued with Lee Ki-sang's older brother, now her husband.

"I loved music too much"

The story then took an unexpected turn. Seo Jang-hoon disclosed that there was once a special episode between Shin and Lee, saying, "Dong-yup hyung once got turned down while trying to get Eun Mee's number at a live club." Shin, who had been talking about other people's love lives, found the spotlight on his own past. He did not deny it. "It's true," he said. The place, he recalled, was near Sanwoolim Small Theater. "I liked that neighborhood," he said, explaining that he came to know Lee after hearing there was someone who sang well there. Lee had not yet begun her career in earnest, but her exceptional ability had already drawn the attention of music insiders.

"It was the early-to-mid 1990s, and she sang insanely well," Shin said of Lee's singing at the time. Impressed, he wanted to get to know her and asked for her contact details. The answer was a refusal. "I thought it'd be nice to know her, so I asked for her number, but she never gave it to me," he said, adding, "I felt hurt and disappointed." Lee, however, remembered it differently. "I actually remember seeing Shin Dong-yup," she said, "but I don't remember him asking for my phone number." The episode had stayed fairly vivid for Shin, but the moment of being asked for her number had left no special memory for Lee.

Lee joked about why she had turned him down. "I probably did it because I loved music so much back then," she said, recalling the days when she was wholly absorbed in music. Shin fired back, "So you couldn't love both. How hard that must have been," and the studio erupted in laughter.

Read the original (Korean)