Announcer Min-seon Kwak Says She Was Scammed During PC Repair: “Let’s Never Call Someone Over Carelessly Again”

1. Overview

In October 2024, e-sports announcer Kwak Min-seon posted on social media that she had called out a repair technician to fix her broken PC. After three days of repairs, during which the list of faulty components and the cost kept growing, a friend discovered that the actual cause was a single power switch. The post attracted widespread attention.

The two posts Kwak shared on Threads make up nearly the entire account of the incident. In the first, she described feeling at a loss as the list of repairs kept growing. In the second, she revealed the “real cause,” a missing hard drive, and a counterfeit copy of Windows, all discovered with help from an acquaintance. The story drew significant attention because it seemed to confirm, through a celebrity’s firsthand experience, a PC repair rip-off scheme that many people had experienced or heard about. Since then, it has been repeatedly cited in online communities as a cautionary tale about calling someone to repair a PC.

2. An ever-growing list of repairs

When her PC broke down in October 2024, Kwak called a repair technician to get an estimate. According to her Threads post, the initial diagnosis was that “only A needed fixing.” But once repairs began, she was told that B was faulty too, followed by problems with C and D. When she asked whether that was really the last of it, the answer was, “Actually, E might be suspect too.”

She gritted her teeth as the costs mounted because she wanted the PC fixed quickly. But the technician was still making visits on the third day, with a fourth day looming. Kwak wrote, “E might need repairs too. Should I stop now and just buy a new computer?” and added, “I can’t believe I’m this ignorant and helpless.” The Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that when she put the question to her followers, “Just buy a new one” received 88% of the votes. Judging by the comments, many people also urged her to stop the repairs.

3. The cause comes to light

Kwak eventually stopped the repairs and took the PC to a trusted acquaintance. According to a second post she shared on October 21, the reason it would not turn on was a faulty power switch on the case. There was one other problem even after the switch was fixed: the SSD had been installed incorrectly in the meantime. Once that was corrected, the PC turned on without issue.

What came next was more serious. Kwak wrote, “The 2 TB hard drive is missing, and I’m looking for it,” and revealed that the copy of Windows the technician had installed for a fee of over 100,000 won was counterfeit. She added that this was one of the points she had challenged at the time because the technician’s account kept changing. A PC that had remained broken while its repair costs climbed for three days had come back to life with a single switch, naturally raising questions about the initial diagnosis and all the additional faults identified afterward. Kwak thanked those who had advised her, saying, “I’m glad I stopped the repairs, even if it was late,” and concluded, “From now on, if my PC breaks, let’s never call just anyone.”

4. News coverage and renewed circulation

The following day, October 22, the Kyunghyang Shinmun reported on the posts under the headline “Announcer Kwak Min-seon Falls Victim to PC Repair Scam: ‘Let’s Never Call Just Anyone.’” From that same day, blog and online café posts with titles along the lines of “Announcer Kwak Min-seon Scammed by a Computer Repair Technician” began appearing in succession.

The incident did not fade after its initial burst of attention. In 2026, a post featuring screenshots of the two messages was shared again on FM Korea under the title “Announcer Kwak Min-seon’s Computer Repair Experience” and became a popular post, surpassing 500,000 views, 1,000 recommendations, and around 300 comments. This can be seen as evidence that PC repair overcharging is not an abstract concern for many people.

5. Authenticity debate

The central question in this case is whether the technician deliberately committed fraud or whether a misdiagnosis and poor workmanship were to blame.

5.1. The view that it was deliberate fraud

Above all, the outcome was extreme. Over three days, the list of faulty components grew from A to E, and so did the cost, yet another person found that the cause was a single power switch on the case. Given that checking the switch and power supply is a basic step when a PC will not power on, it is difficult to dismiss repeated part replacements without finding the cause as a simple mistake. Add to that the SSD, which should have been working, being incorrectly connected after the repairs; the missing 2 TB hard drive; and the counterfeit copy of Windows installed for a fee, and it is natural to ask whether all of this could really have happened by chance.

There have, in fact, been cases in which PC repair scams resulted in criminal penalties. In 2021, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency booked nine repair technicians and a company for swindling around 362 million won from 40 locations by deliberately infecting customers’ PCs with ransomware or inflating recovery costs. Two of the technicians were arrested. This shows that schemes involving inflated repair costs do exist in the industry.

5.2. The view that it is too early to draw a conclusion

However, everything known so far comes from Kwak’s side alone. Neither the technician nor the company has issued a response, and there is no confirmed report of a complaint or investigation. The technician’s name and the company have not been made public, so there is no way to hear the other side. In theory, it cannot be ruled out that other parts were genuinely faulty after the initial diagnosis, or that the SSD was dislodged by a mistake during the repair process.

The missing hard drive is another matter. Kwak only said she was “looking for it,” and there have been no reports of whether it was later found. Some blogs even speculated that the technician may have been after personal data on the drive, but that claim has no supporting evidence. It is therefore worth noting that calling the incident a “scam” relies on Kwak’s account and media headlines; it has not been legally established as fact.

6. Trivia

• The Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that in May of the same year, Kwak was struck in the face by celebratory fireworks while hosting an e-sports event in Daejeon, leaving her with a serious injury to the vision in her left eye. Around the time of this incident, she had only just returned to broadcasting.
• In her first post, Kwak described the technician’s visits continuing into the third day, writing, “When morning breaks, it’ll be day four.” She said the poll and the advice helped her stop the repairs, and ended her second post with, “Thanks, everyone!!!”