Death of high-profile actor highlights South Korea’s huge pressure on its celebrities

In the about 1,000 days between her drunken-driving crash in May 2022 and her death, South Korean mainstream news organizations published at least around 2,000 stories on film actor Kim Sae-ron.

They illustrate how the local media often cover a celebrity’s fall from grace. Previously one of the brightest young stars in South Korean cinema, Kim was condemned and ridiculed for driving drunk; for talking about her financial struggles after losing roles; for taking a job at a coffee shop; for attempting a comeback in theater; for going out with friends instead of “showing remorse”; and for being seen smiling on set while shooting an indie movie.

After the 24-year-old actor was found dead at her home Sunday, the headlines predictably swung to calling for changes to the way celebrities are treated in the public arena.

Kim’s death, which police consider a suicide, adds to a growing list of high-profile celebrity deaths in the country, which some experts attribute to the enormous pressure celebrities face under the gaze of a relentlessly unforgiving media that seizes on every misstep.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In South Korea, callers can receive 24-hour counseling through the suicide prevention hotline 1577-0199, the “Life Line” service at 1588-9191, the “Hope Phone” at 129 and the “Youth Phone” at 1388.

Here’s a look at the intense pressure faced by South Korean celebrities who fall from grace.

A sudden fall from grace

South Korea is notoriously harsh on its celebrities, particularly women.

Kim rose to stardom as a child actor with the 2010 hit crime thriller The Man from Nowhere and garnered acclaim and popularity for her acting in movies and TV dramas for years.

But that changed after May 18, 2022, when Kim crashed a vehicle into a tree and an electrical transformer while driving drunk in southern Seoul. She posted a handwritten apology on Instagram and reportedly compensated around 60 shops that lost power temporarily because of the crash, but that did little to defuse negative coverage and she struggled to find acting work.

When a Seoul court issued a 200 million won ($139,000) fine over the crash in April 2023, Kim expressed her fears about the media to reporters, saying many articles about her private life were untrue.

“I’m too scared to say anything about them,” she said.

Relentless negative coverage

In the wake of Kim’s drunken-driving crash, celebrity gossip channels on YouTube began posting negative videos about her private life, suggesting without providing evidence that she was exaggerating her financial straits by working at coffee shops, and arguing that social media posts showing her socializing with friends meant she wasn’t showing enough remorse.

Other entertainers, especially female, have struggled to find work after run-ins with the law, including drunken driving or substance abuse, and experts say many of them are reluctant to seek treatment for mental health problems like depression, fearing further negative coverage.

Kwon Young-chan, a comedian-turned-scholar who leads a group helping celebrities with mental health issues, said celebrities often feel helpless when the coverage turns negative after spending years carefully cultivating their public image. Kwon, who stayed with Kim’s relatives during a traditional three-day funeral process, said her family is considering legal action against a YouTube creator with hundreds of thousands of subscribers for what they describe as groundless attacks on Kim’s private life.

Peter Jongho Na, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, lamented on Facebook that South Korean society had become a giant version of “Squid Game,” the brutal Netflix survival drama, “abandoning people who make mistakes or fall behind, acting as though nothing happened.”

Media blamed for celebrity deaths

The National Police Agency said officers found no signs of foul play at Kim’s home and that she left no note.

But a spate of high-profile deaths has sparked discussions about how news organizations cover the private lives of celebrities and whether floods of critical online comments are harming their mental health. Similar conversations happened after the 2008 death of mega movie star Choi Jin-sil; the death of her former baseball star husband, Cho Sung-min, in 2013; the deaths of K-Pop singers Sulli and Goo Hara in 2019; and the death of “Parasite” actor Lee Sun-kyun in 2023.

Sensational but unsubstantiated claims like from social media are widely recycled and amplified by traditional media outlets as they compete for audience attention, said Hyun-jae Yu, a communications professor at Seoul’s Sogang University.

Struggling with a sharp decline in traditional media readership, he said, media turn to covering YouTube drama as the easiest way to drive up traffic, often skipping the work of reporting and verifying facts.

Following the 2019 deaths of Sulli and Goo Hara, which were widely attributed to cyberbullying and sexual harassment both in the public and media, lawmakers proposed various measures to discourage harsh online comments. These included expanding real-name requirements and strengthening websites’ requirements to weed out hate speech and false information, but none of these proposed laws passed.

Reforms remain elusive

South Korean management agencies are getting increasingly active in taking legal action to protect their entertainers from online bullying. Hybe, which manages several K-Pop groups including BTS, publishes regular updates about lawsuits it’s filing against social media commentators it deems malicious.

But Yu said it’s crucial for mainstream media companies to strengthen self-regulation and limit their use of YouTube content as news sources. Government authorities could also compel YouTube and other social media platforms to take greater responsibility for content created by their users, he said, including actively removing problematic videos and preventing creators from monetizing them.

The South Korean office of Google, YouTube’s parent company, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Heo Chanhaeng, an executive director at the Center for Media Responsibility and Human Rights, said news organizations and websites should consider shutting down the comments sections on entertainment stories entirely.

“Her private life was indiscriminately reported beyond what was necessary,” Heo said. “That’s not a legitimate matter of public interest.”

—Kim Tong-Hyung, Associated Press

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