Description: Why Girl's Day's Yura joked that she and Yang Se-chan had kept a relationship hidden on Running Man episode 823, aired October 18, 2026. The rumor, an old group trip and the actual punchline explained.
Yura's line about dating Yang Se-chan without anyone noticing was a joke about a rumor that had followed her for years, not an announcement that they were a couple. On the October 18, 2026 episode of South Korea's Running Man, she took a story that strangers had invented about her and made herself its most mischievous narrator.
The cast and the setup
Yura is a singer and actor formerly of the K-pop group Girl's Day. Yang Se-chan is a comedian and regular member of SBS's long-running variety show Running Man. Episode 823 aired at 6:10 p.m. Korean time and featured Yura alongside Apink singer Park Cho-rong. Its Korean title, Hwanseung-ui Jakdaegi, described a game of choosing and switching teams, staged with the playful tension of a dating show.
The producers had a convenient triangle. Se-chan had previously called Cho-rong his ideal type. Yura, meanwhile, had been named by online speculators as a possible former girlfriend. The two women therefore entered the episode carrying very different pieces of television backstory.
How the dating rumor began
The participants traced the speculation to fellow cast member Haha mentioning that Se-chan had once dated an idol. Some online users decided the unnamed person must be Yura. According to Yura's account on the show, questions about Se-chan then appeared repeatedly under her social-media posts and entertainment articles. She was friendly with both Se-chan and his comedian brother Yang Se-hyung, so at first she simply laughed it off.
Eventually the recurring comments became a joke with a frustrating afterlife. Yura asked why Se-chan had never cleared things up for her. She also recalled denying that the two had dated on a different YouTube program in January 2026, where she participated in a lie-detector segment. That segment was television entertainment, not scientific proof of anyone's private life.
Why the line landed
Instead of giving another solemn denial, Yura said that being asked about a romance so often was practically the same as having a dating scandal. Then she turned to Se-chan and played along: they had supposedly been together all along, and had done a remarkable job of hiding it. He responded in surprise, effectively asking what had happened to the Yura he knew.
The joke works by flipping ownership of the rumor. The person who had to answer strangers' questions suddenly became the one adding an outrageous new chapter. Se-chan was put in the impossible position of having to refute a comedy routine while everyone else enjoyed treating it like a confession. A dating-show-style episode supplied the perfect stage.
What about their overnight trip 13 years ago?
Yura then remembered a two-day, one-night trip to a stream near Sokcho roughly 13 years earlier. Without context, that sounds like a dramatic new clue. Se-chan even urged her to choose her words carefully. But the detail that changes the story is who else went: members of Girl's Day and Se-chan's brother Se-hyung were part of the group. They caught fish and swam together. It was a group outing, not evidence of a secret romantic getaway.
Kim Jong-kook kept the bit alive by teasing that somebody in the group must have had a crush. That was his comic speculation, not a finding about the people involved. At the episode's final team selection, Se-chan chose Cho-rong.
The answer
The broadcast supplied a clear chain: an old vague remark, an online guess, years of comments, Yura's playful reversal, and a group trip turned into suspicious-sounding television material. The scene was widely covered by Korean entertainment outlets on October 18–19; that coverage does not establish comparable popularity outside Korea.
Yura did not reveal a hidden relationship. She demonstrated what happens when someone tired of being cast in a rumor decides to improvise the script herself. The supposed romantic evidence eventually came down to a fishing trip with the whole gang.
References (5)
- SBS official episode 823 clip: the old group trip, October 18, 2026
- SBS official clip: final team selection, October 18, 2026
- NEWSIS, October 19, 2026: the joke and origin of the rumor
- Xportsnews, October 18, 2026: the full group-trip explanation
- NewDaily, October 19, 2026: earlier denial and on-air exchange
