Sulli was found dead in October, Goo Hara in November and Cha In Ha in December. Six years later, little has changed, and there has been another spike in high-profile suicides.
He had become the target of online abuse in the wake of Choi Jin-sil’s death. Three years later, in January 2013, Choi Jin-sil’s ex-husband and the father of their two children, the former baseball player Cho Seong-min, also took his own life. When I arrived at Choi’s funeral, her younger brother started hitting me, crying: “You promised to protect my sister! Why couldn’t you?” Two years later, in March 2010, he too killed himself. I found out about her death at 5am the next day from her younger brother, Choi Jin-young, an actor and singer.Ĭhoi Jin-Sil Photograph: Hee Chul Kim/WireImage “I want to campaign to stop them, retire from entertainment and do charity work, like Audrey Hepburn. I had heard her last words: “As the victim of internet hate I don’t think abusive comments should be allowed,” she had said. I and a few other people had been out drinking with her just four hours before she died. Forty days after Ahn killed himself, Choi took her own life. That actor was Choi Jin-sil, then one of the most in-demand women in the industry. People were looking for someone to blame for Ahn’s death, and she was the easiest target. The photos ran with the caption: “Actress in shock at not being able to get the money back from dead actor.” She and other people in the industry had loaned Ahn money but the media portrayed them as loan sharks. The waiting photographers caught all of this. She was in such a state of shock that she was unable to walk properly. On the day they found him, the actor and I went to the hospital where his body had been taken.