[Newsis]
[Newsis]

Actor Sunwoo Yong-nyeo has revealed that a man posing as a Buddhist monk swindled her out of a jewelry collection worth the price of a house when she was young.

Sunwoo shared the story on her YouTube channel Thursday.

"When I was young, I wasn't very interested in accessories," she said. "My husband had given me jade, emeralds, diamonds — you name it. Looking back, it was probably worth the price of a house. But I ended up handing all of it over to a fake monk."

She recounted that a monk had come to her home claiming the family might face misfortune. Because her mother had warned her to be wary of fake monks, she turned him away with only rice on his first visit and only money on his second.

On his third visit, the man insisted he had to enter the house to pray, and Sunwoo said she ultimately let him into the master bedroom.

He asked her to prepare rice and water and to lay out all the jewelry her husband had bought her. He placed the jewels in a white envelope, tied it with string, then asked her to fetch some salt — telling her to scatter it outside after he left.

A few hours later, Sunwoo opened the envelope to retrieve her wedding ring and was shocked to find only rice inside.

"When I told my husband all the jewelry was gone, he cursed at me," she said. "Losing the jewelry hurt, but what hurt more was hearing those words from him."

Her husband contacted police through an acquaintance, and a few months later he happened to spot the fake monk on the street and caught him himself. When her husband demanded to know where he had sold the jewelry — worth the price of a house — the man replied that he had not realized it was so valuable and had sold it for next to nothing.

When they went to the man's home, however, they found he was living in dire poverty. "He was living in such miserable conditions," Sunwoo said. "In the end, my husband just turned around and came home."


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