He Was Rejected 10 Times — Yoon Soo Young's Love Story

Some couples make love look easy. Yoon Soo Young and Kim Ji Young make it look like something worth fighting for — ten rejections, a stubborn refusal to give up, and eventually a morning routine that has the internet reaching for tissues. On April 7, the newlywed couple made their debut appearance on SBS's beloved variety series Dongsang Imong — You Are My Destiny, and the thirty minutes they spent on screen were enough to make fans forget every cynical thing they had ever thought about love.

The episode was their first public window into a married life that has, by all accounts, become a study in closeness. "She really does not want to leave my side," Yoon Soo Young said with the calm certainty of a man who is not even slightly bothered by this fact. "From the moment we wake up, she's right there."

The Morning That Started Everything

The most talked-about revelation from the episode was not their wedding photographs, not the story of how they met, and not the baby they are expecting — though all of those things made the segment extraordinary. It was the morning shower.

Kim Ji Young, the influencer and former flight attendant who became famous through her appearance on Heart Signal 4, shared that the couple showers together every morning. "It increases attachment," she explained simply, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. "When you start the day that way, everything feels more connected."

For some, that might sound like oversharing. For viewers of Dongsang Imong, a show that has spent years documenting the intimate mechanics of Korean celebrity marriages, it landed as exactly the kind of honest, unguarded moment that makes the show what it is. The internet, predictably, had a lot of feelings about it.

A Love Story That Almost Didn't Happen

The path to this morning routine was not a straight one. Yoon Soo Young, a tech entrepreneur who was named to Forbes Korea's 2030 Power Leaders list in 2019, met Kim Ji Young through a mutual friend named Lee Ju-mi. The connection was immediate — on his side, at least. Kim Ji Young turned him down more than ten times.

"I don't really stress about being rejected," Yoon Soo Young said, explaining his approach with a candor that would make any rom-com screenwriter envious. "So I just kept telling her: whenever you're free, I'm free. I'm available 365 days a year."

It is a line that works considerably better in practice than it sounds on paper. Eventually, Kim Ji Young ran out of reasons to say no — or more precisely, she discovered that she didn't actually want to. They married in July 2025, and have been essentially attached at the hip ever since. Their first child is due soon.

Two Worlds That Found Each Other

Part of what makes the couple compelling is how differently they came to the moment of their meeting. Kim Ji Young left home at 22, driven by a sudden change in her family's financial circumstances. "I needed a stable job quickly," she said, "so I became a flight attendant." She worked in the cabin crew for seven years, then transitioned into modeling and content creation after her Heart Signal 4 appearance made her one of the most-followed new faces in Korea's influencer landscape.

Yoon Soo Young built a different kind of career — quieter in public, louder on paper. His paid reading club platform became a genuine business, the kind of concept that sounds obvious in retrospect but required a specific combination of cultural timing and entrepreneurial instinct to pull off. The Forbes recognition, earned before he turned 30, was a signal that something was working.

On the surface, a flight-attendant-turned-influencer and a Forbes-listed entrepreneur seem like they belong to different narratives. But both careers require a fundamental belief that connection is worth chasing, that the gap between people can be closed with enough effort. Maybe that's why Yoon Soo Young was never going to stop calling.

What Fans Said

Social media responses to the episode were swift and warm. The couple's straightforward, non-performative affection — no choreographed charm, no scripted one-liners — struck viewers as genuinely refreshing. "They're not trying to be cute," one comment read. "They just are." Another post, shared widely on Korean Twitter, was simply Yoon Soo Young's "365 days free" quote, followed by a row of crying emojis.

The pregnancy announcement, confirmed quietly within the episode, added another layer of emotion. For a couple who have been public for less than a year, the pace of their life together is striking — but watching them talk about it, the speed feels less like recklessness and more like two people who decided, once they found each other, that there was no reason to wait.

Kim Ji Young's specific brand of warmth — a little mischievous, entirely unfiltered, completely at ease in her own skin — was exactly the kind of energy that has fueled her following online. "I want to be next to you all the time," she seemed to communicate in every frame of the episode, without ever needing to say it directly. She didn't need to. Her husband said it for her.

SBS's Ongoing Streak

Dongsang Imong — You Are My Destiny has been a reliable fixture in SBS's Monday lineup for years, thriving precisely because it treats celebrity relationships not as spectacle but as something worth paying attention to. Yoon Soo Young and Kim Ji Young represent the show's ability to find couples whose chemistry is not manufactured for the cameras, whose stories have enough texture to sustain an hour of television without needing drama to drive them.

For viewers watching Tuesday night, the episode offered something increasingly rare in the content landscape: the uncomplicated joy of watching two people who are genuinely happy with the choice they made. In a media environment that often rewards conflict and crisis, that simplicity is its own kind of statement.

Yoon Soo Young said it simply: "Kindness comes from strength." If their marriage so far is any indication, he has found the kind of partnership that keeps both of them strong. And somewhere, presumably, a morning routine is already underway.