Singer Seo In-young shared a personal story about her family and her stepmother on her YouTube channel.

Seo uploaded a video titled “ First reveal of the stepmother who raised Seo In-young for 30 years, plus a tigerlike biological father” to her YouTube channel on Friday.


Seo, born in 1984, is best known as a member of girl group Jewelry, which debuted in 2002. She also had a successful solo career, highlighted by the hit song “Cinderella” in 2008. The singer said her parents divorced when she was in third grade and after that, Seo and her sister lived with her stepmother.

In the video, Seo expressed her feelings about her sae-eomma, the Korean word for stepmother, which is literally translated to “new mother.”

“The word sae-eomma really makes me sad; it’s not a bad thing, but there’s a weird connotation to the word stepmother; I want to remove that,” she said. “I grew up well and she really tried her best.”

Seo married an entrepreneur in 2023 but they parted ways in less than two years, in late 2024.

“A lot, including my divorce, has happened recently, and I was able to spend time alone to think alone,” the singer said. “That made me feel sorry and thankful toward my stepmother.”

Seo also shared how her stepmother never gave birth to her own children, because she feared that she might end up treating the kids differently.

“Be reassured that you have two daughters. I will make sure you never regret not having a child.”

The singer started her YouTube channel on March 26 and has 441,000 subscribers as of Sunday. Seo’s latest video about her stepmother garnered over 2.2 million views since the video was uploaded on Thursday.


BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]