Did Devin Booker Date Hoyeon Jung?

Rumors have been circulating surrounding the relationship status of Devin Booker and Hoyeon Jung.

If you don’t know who these people are, Devin Booker is an NBA star who plays for the Phoenix Suns. He was also an important member of the Team USA basketball team that recently earned a gold medal in the Olympics.

Hoyeon Jung is a model and actress who hails from South Korea. She has achieved international status with her model career, signing a contract with the likes of Louis Vuitton, which is one of the very prestigious names in the world of fashion. To Americans, Jung is probably most familiar as an actress in Squid Game, which is a Netflix series.

In that series, she played Kang Sae-byeok, or Player 067, a typically very stoic character who had fled North Korea and lost her parents in doing so, although she was also a deep character who could show emotion.

Let’s take a closer look at the rumors before betting on them at top-rated sportsbooks. 

Different Worlds

Now, it must already be apparent how these two people, Booker and Jung, are frequenting very different circles.

Booker is in the world of sports. He is a professional athlete. Jung is in the world of modeling and entertainment. These two people do not seem likely to cross paths.

Going further, one is an American. Whereas Booker is from the United States and played college ball in this country – at Kentucky – before joining the NBA, Jung is from South Korea, where she studied at the Dongduk Women’s University College of Performing Arts.

How These Two Became Connected

One must wonder, given the different worlds that these two people inhabit, how they could possibly be connected, such that there are rumors circulating about their relationship status. It all started with a fake interaction on Instagram.

Supposedly, this interaction is initiated by Booker, who is alleged to have commented to Jung, “check your dm shawty.” In case you don’t know, “dm” means direct message. This comment means that Booker wants to communicate with Jung privately, implying that he has intentions of being intimate with her.

This interaction is fake in the sense that Booker did not actually compose the message. Jung likewise did not actually compose her response – in this fake interaction, she says “No” with a heart next to the word. She has thus, in this fake interaction, turned down Booker’s advances.

This fake interaction is captured in a screenshot, which was altered.

Reactions

Even though the screenshot is difficult to find plausible – because it is such a sophomoric and clumsy way for anyone, let alone an NBA star, to try to initiate a romantic relationship with somebody and because this somebody frequents circles remote to the world of sports – people are commenting on it.

Folks have taken to different platforms, such as Reddit and X, to enjoy the prospect of Booker making advances toward Jung.

Forgetting the fact that Jung is actually in a relationship – she is in a long-term relationship with Lee Dong-hwi, who is fittingly a South Korean actor – users like to entertain different opinions as to whether a relationship between the two might prosper.

Jung’s Response

You might wonder whether Jung herself encountered these rumors and how she responded.

She did find out about them. In an interview with Elle, an internationally known French magazine, she was asked about Booker. Specifically, she was prompted to confirm that the rumor of Booker composing a DM to her was fake.

Her response was terse. You could perhaps call it curt. She said that she does not even know who Booker is. Explicitly, her response emphasizes the different worlds in which these two people live. Booker himself has not responded. It’s clear enough that he was not flirting – or in any way interacting – with Jung.