Lee Yi Kyung Under Fire For “Shipping” aespa’s Winter With An Underaged Celebrity
ENA‘s new variety show Country Life of Gen-Z (also known as City Z Goes to the Countryside) premiered recently. It stars Marry My Husband actor Lee Yi Kyung, Lovely Runner actor Song Geon Hee, comedian and singer Yang Se Chan, comedian Lee Eun Ji, and actor-singer Jung Dong Won (also known as JD1).
A real-life ‘hipster’ variety show where Gen-Z celebrities from the city become country Z by living in the countryside.
โ ENA
In the first two episodes, (G)I-DLE‘s Miyeon and aespa‘s Winter guested, exciting fans, including Jung Dong Won, as he is also a self-professed fan of Winter especially.
WINTER for City Z Goes to the Countryside pic.twitter.com/9mzzFvoZoc
— winter pics (@archivedwinter) September 8, 2024
Unfortunately, fans are not happy about Winter’s treatment on the show, specifically by Lee Yi Kyung.
During Episode 2, while preparing food, Winter struggled with the fish bones, so Dong Won stepped in to assist her. He jokingly told the production crew to edit out the parts of him looking uncool.
๐ถcan weโฆinstead of the ones i looked scared, just edit and air those that i cut (the fish) confidently, to look cool?
winter: is there anyโฆ?
*flashbacks to scaredy dongwon๐ญthey do have siblings vibe for real lol#์ ๋์ #์๊ณจ์๊ฐ๋์Z pic.twitter.com/fQzZtxjGAT
— ๐ (@spacedongwon) September 15, 2024
One clip has garnered attention on X (formerly Twitter) specifically. It showcased Lee Yi Kyung sneakily taking photos of Dong Won and Winter side-by-side as they prepared food. Yi Kyung handed the Polaroid to Dong Won, but he didn’t leave it at that. He teased Dong Won, asking, “You said you like older women, right?” Yi Kyung gave the Polaroidย of Dong Won and Winter to him, referring to it as a “gift.”
Havenโt really had access to internet these days so I missed a lotโฆ Iโm so mad these boys are treating Winter like an object
Lee Yi Kyung : โDong Won-ah, you said you like older women, right? It's a gift, you punk.โ
๐ A polaroid of him and Winterpic.twitter.com/CEg9s9eHZF
— Jazz (@mjkmwntr) September 17, 2024
Dong Won confessed he does like older women, specifically Winter. He claimed she is reliable. Yet, it’s Lee Yi Kyung’s behavior toward the two that netizens are finding alarming, as he seemingly “shipped” a minor (Dong Won is only 17) with Winter who is 23. Both international and Korean fans found this “creepy” and objectifying toward Winter. It was also concerning he took the photo without their consent or knowledge, as they both appeared surprised.
taking a picture of winter and dongwon (17yrs) without asking and gifting it to him because he "likes older people"…just strange behavior pic.twitter.com/FVGYlJLAWk
— ๐ฅ (@karwinfan) September 17, 2024
the kid being a fan is harmless but i hope they just let it stayed that way without any side remarks about how they interact
— โู (@wntrsgf) September 17, 2024
ํ… ๋ ์ด๊ฒ๋์ซ์ด
๋์ด ๊ฐ์ด ์๋ ๊ฑธ ํ๋ฝ์์ด ์ฌ์ง์ฐ๊ณ
๋ ๋ช ์ด ๋์จ ์ฌ์ง์ ํ ๋ช ํํ ๋ง ์ค
'๋ ์ฐ์ ์ข์ํ๋ค ๊ทธ๋ฌ์ง? ์ ๋ฌผ์ด์ผ ์ด ์์์.'
์ฌ์๊ฐ๋ฌผ๊ฑด์ ๋๊น… ์ฌ์๊ฐ์ ๋ฌผ์ ๋๊น…
๋ด์์ง์์ด ๋ด๊ฐ๋์จ์ฌ์ง์ ๋จ์๊ฐ ๋จ์์๊ฒ ์ ๋ฌผํ๋ค
์๋นก์นจ? ๋๋นก์นจ ์ค๊ฐ ์๋ ๊ฒ ์ง์ง ํ๋ณตํด์์๋๊ฒ๊ฐ๋ pic.twitter.com/aV7pPmzKii— ๋ด (@cndnsdmk) September 16, 2024
Ugh… You know what I hate even more? Taking pictures of the two of them together without permission and then giving it to only one person.
‘You said you like older women, right? It’s a gift, you punk.’ Is she an object…? Is she a gift…? A man gives a picture of me to another man without my consent… Wouldn’t you be angry? I’m angry. Do you thinkย she’s smiling because she’s truly happy there?โ @cndnsdmk/X
lee yikyung is so weird for saying that, heโs lowkey shipping a minor with 23 yo woman by saying โthey both look good togetherโ THIS ISNT NORMAL ๐๐๐ https://t.co/AmBfEWKomy
— hera ๐โโฌ (@katarinayoonz) September 17, 2024
Meanwhile, fans enjoyed Winter and Dong Won’s interactions, claiming they radiated “sibling vibes.”