.jpg?itok=29mCmEhj "More families forced out of north Gaza, as Israeli tanks push deeper")
Culinary Class Wars contestant chef Lee Young-sook is in hot soup over an ongoing debt controversy.
The 69-year-old, who appeared as a White Spoon on the Netflix show, has yet to pay a debt of 100 million won (about S$95,300) that was borrowed in April 2010, reported South Korean media.
The creditor’s son, A, released an IOU in Daejeon District Court showing the debt owed to his late father.
The court granted A’s request to seize and collect Lee’s appearance fee on Culinary Class Wars on Nov 1 as payment.
The borrowed money, said A, was intended for Lee to open a restaurant and sell her popular shiitake mushroom dishes, according to a local report.
A’s father, Mr Cho, was the head of a shiitake mushroom association then, and had lent the chef the money. He died three months later in July 2011.
After Mr Cho’s death, his family discovered the agreement and filed a civil lawsuit against Lee.
They won in 2012 but Lee claimed that she didn’t have the money to pay Mr Cho’s family.
The family then placed a provisional seizure on Lee’s land and recovered about 19 million won. However, they weren’t able to recover the rest of the money.
That’s not all. A also alleged that Lee defaulted on another debt where Mr Cho was a joint guarantor. As a result, the guarantors had to fork out 48 million won to repay the loan.
In total, said A, Lee owed his family more than 300 million won, including interest.
According to reports, Lee’s representatives have called the allegations “malicious” and “defamatory”, and claimed that all her debt to Mr Cho has been repaid.
