Fame and Shame: The Deadly Toll of  Celebrity in South Korea

January 2024, Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon Ho ascended a stage in Seoul flanked by 15 friends and colleagues from across the South Korean film industry. Collectively, the assembled directors, actors and producers, all dressed head to toe in black, had won more than two dozen Grand Bell Awards, South Korea‘s equivalent to the Oscars. They were there, in force, to condemn their country’s police and media for the tragic fate of a friend and collaborator, actor Lee Sun-kyun. Two months earlier, Lee — one of the unforgettable leads of Bong’s multi-Oscar-winning drama Parasite — had been one of Korea’s biggest and most beloved movie stars. In the ensuing weeks, he had become a figure of scandal, ridicule and disgrace. On Dec. 27, 2023, he was discovered dead by suicide inside his car in a public parking lot near the center of Seoul. He was 48.

Lee’s downfall initially bewildered those who knew and cared about him. Later, it infuriated them.

“In the face of the tragic death of actor Lee Sun-kyun, we share the same heart that this should never happen again,” Bong said from the stage in a prepared statement. The director was joined by hundreds of film professionals and 29 Korean arts groups in signing his name to a statement that read: “We call for a probe of the investigators to discover the truth [of how Lee’s case was handled]; we request media outlets to delete articles that do not fit their function as journalism; and we urge the authorities to revise the law to protect the human rights of artists.”

Lee had first discovered that his life was about to be turned upside down in the same way that virtually all of Korean society did: by reading a story from the regional Gyeonggi Newspaper published on Oct. 19, 2023, that police in the city of Incheon, to the west of Seoul, were investigating a tip that he had consumed ketamine and marijuana. Compounding the scandal, he was said to have taken the drugs with a 29-year-old bar hostess.

South Korea enforces some of the world’s harshest drug laws. The penalty for first-time marijuana users can be as severe as up to five years in prison, even if the consumption occurred while the offender was overseas in a place where the drug is legal. Stronger drugs can lead to much stronger penalties. The allegations against Lee arrived at a time of greater vigilance than ever among Korea’s anti-drug enforcers. In spring 2023, South Korea’s right-wing president, Yoon Suk Yeol — the same man who was impeached and eventually removed from office in April over his disastrous implementation of martial law in December — declared that his government was mounting a renewed war on drugs. In a series of bold public addresses, the Korean president specifically urged police to boost arrest numbers while pursuing high-profile cases that would send a message.

Lee had been a star in his country long enough to know that his career was in deep peril the moment the allegations against him were made public. In the West, a little bad behavior could almost be seen as part of the job description of the movie icon or pop musician — debauchery being deeply intertwined with the mythology of the artist or rock star — but South Korea’s pop-cultural sphere is shaped by deeply socially conservative values. Celebrities are expected not just to entertain the public but to serve as shining moral exemplars. In the court of public opinion, any credible allegation of drug use, adultery or moral misstep is typically perceived as career-ending.

“The Korean public holds celebrities to a higher moral standard than normal people, and the media is very aggressive when it comes to reporting on scandals,” says Im Young-ho, a professor of media studies at Pusan National University. “They take unconfirmed allegations and report them as facts. On the contrary, when it comes to politicians and public figures with real power, the media is very cautious — they report very defensively with rigorous fact-checking, assuming they can be sued for libel.

“But celebrities are total underdogs in their power dynamic with the press,” Im adds. “If a lawsuit is filed by a politician, it can be settled legally. For celebrities, the very fact that they are engulfed in a scandal is already a death blow.”

A 2022 survey by polling company Hankook Research in December 2022 found that about 80 percent of South Koreans believed that celebrities caught using drugs should suffer greater social or economic consequences than normal citizens.

Jang Won-seok, a veteran film producer and CEO of production studio BA Entertainment, says local movie stars’ only option is to toe a line of total moral rectitude. “It’s excessive, but the reality is that the Korean public demands this of artists. The entertainment industry has no choice but to comply. Without the public, our industry would not exist.”

He adds, “The artists in the Korean entertainment industry are probably the most moral people in the world — at least on the surface.”

A considerable portion of Lee’s popularity derived from how perfectly he had always seemed to conform to the archetype of the lovable, family-man movie star. He rose to fame in the 1990s thanks to a sequence of hit Korean TV dramas, often playing jovial, clean-cut supporting characters (Coffee Prince, Behind the White Tower) or protagonists driven by a soulful sense of decency and dignity (Pasta, My Mister). Early in his career, he added artistic credibility to his surging popularity by seeking out opportunities in edgy indie films and challenging stage productions (Our Sunhi, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon). In 2009, the local tabloids rejoiced when he married popular actress Jeon Hye-jin, whose career was also on the rise. Later, the media cheered when the couple welcomed two sons. By the time Lee became internationally recognizable thanks to his starring part in Bong’s Parasite — playing somewhat against type as the haughty tech executive whose luxury home is infiltrated by a family of working-class grifters — he was a household name in Korea, universally beloved for his wholesome image and his famously soothing baritone way of speaking (fans’ affectionate nickname for him was “The Voice”).

The actor’s friends and collaborators insist the good-guy persona fans adored was very much the real Lee.

“He was genuine in every way, whether in his acting or dealing with people around him,” says Jang, who produced Lee’s 2014 hit action feature A Hard Day. “He was serious about his work, but also very humorous and down-to-earth. I enjoyed every moment of working with him. I’m not just saying this to respect his memory — he was genuinely a decent and sincere person.”

The picture that rapidly took shape in the Korean press and popular imagination in late 2023, however, was of an adulterous, drug-addled celebrity leading a deviant double life. An explosion of heated coverage followed the initial report, much of it seemingly reliant on police leaks or pure speculation for sourcing. For a Hollywood analog, perhaps imagine the fervor that might have followed if Tom Hanks, at the peak of his Forrest Gump fame, had been busted for shooting heroin with an escort.

Police had begun investigating Lee, it later emerged from a leaked police report, when a former actress with the surname Park showed up at a station to claim that the movie star had consumed drugs with a 29-year-old woman named Kim, who worked as a hostess at a members-only establishment in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam District. Reports said the two women had met while in prison — Park served time for fraud and Kim for drugs — but their relationship had somehow soured. When Kim was brought in for police questioning — and was presumably offered a better deal for cooperation — she alleged that Lee had used drugs with her on several occasions.

Lee’s public statements painted a very different picture from the beginning. The actor said he had never knowingly taken illegal drugs but believed Kim might have tricked him into consuming something while he was at her bar so that she could use this as a basis to blackmail him. The actor said she had threatened and extorted him out of 300 million won ($225,000) and that he later paid a second blackmailer — eventually revealed to be Park — an additional 50 million won ($37,000). He did not, however, deny that he knew the two women. Assumptions about the nature of their relationship further inflamed media coverage and fan outrage.

“Anyone can make mistakes, and Lee might have made some,” says Jang. “But it was never proved that he committed any crime, and the way the allegations were publicized by the police was totally out of line and illegal. His private life was made the subject of national gossip and ridicule. In short, it was a death caused by the violence of the public and the media. The public is not free from blame.”

The material effects on the actor’s career were instantaneous. He promptly pulled out of No Way Out, a high-profile thriller series he had just begun shooting, and various Korean brands dropped him and his wife from endorsement deals.

Lee was brought in for questioning on Oct. 28 on suspicion of using cannabis and psychoactive drugs. He was ultimately tested for drugs four times and never produced a positive result. He was interrogated three times at police headquarters — once for 19 hours straight during an overnight session. Ahead of this final interrogation, Lee’s lawyer requested that he be allowed to arrive at the station via a private entrance, citing the relentless media circus and the toll it was taking on his client. Not only was this request rejected, but on each occasion that Lee privately visited the police, the media was tipped off in advance, forcing the actor to take a walk of shame past a sea of reporters and cameras ready and poised at the station’s entrance — further feeding the media frenzy.

Several thousand articles were published by the Korean press, both tabloids and mainstream outlets, during the two months of Lee’s ordeal. The story dwarfed all domestic news in the country at the time, including a number of corruption scandals then roiling President Yoon’s People Power Party. Whenever there appeared to be a lull in Lee’s case and the narrative threatened to shift toward scrutiny of the police for their lack of hard evidence or progress in the case, a new leak would emerge to re-inflame public outcry, conveniently heaping more pressure on the actor to cooperate.

In late November, national broadcaster KBS, roughly equivalent to Korea’s BBC, took the unprecedented step of releasing snippets of a recorded phone conversation between Lee and Kim. Lee could be heard, in his familiar baritone, bantering somewhat flirtatiously with the woman who would later become either his accuser or blackmailer, depending on whose account you believed. During one sequence, Kim seemed to try to turn the exchange toward the topic of drugs, but Lee shrugged it off and appeared disinterested.

The source of the recording and the leak to KBS has never been revealed. Many have since speculated that Kim created it in her efforts to blackmail Lee, and that the police later leaked it to pressure him into a confession. After his death, KBS came under intense pressure as a public broadcaster for airing the recording, given that it had little value as evidence of the alleged crimes but nonetheless was highly tendentious and damaging to Lee’s reputation.

“The fall of a celebrity triggers the public’s curiosity and voyeuristic desires, and the media monetizes it. What the media doesn’t take into account is the celebrity’s human rights, their pain and the possible risk of suicide,” says Chan-seung Chung, a psychiatrist at Maum Clinic, a mental health organization in Seoul.

In a society as socially conservative as South Korea’s, it should come as no surprise that the stakes can become life and death when a salacious, freewheeling tabloid press operates without safeguards, he adds. In recent years, the rise of even less scrupulous and more rapacious influencer commentariat, with enormous YouTube and social followings, has further escalated the pressures celebrities face.

With still no physical evidence that he had ever committed a crime and the case resting on the claims of one witness, Lee publicly stated in late December, “I ask that the police make a sound judgment about whose statements are more credible — mine or the blackmailers.” Through his lawyer, he also requested that he be given the chance to take a polygraph test. Before the police provided an official response, however, Lee was found dead.

Filmmaker Byun Sung-hyun became close with Lee while making the political thriller Kingmaker, which became a substantial hit for the director and star in 2022. Byun recalls watching in disbelief and dismay as his friend became a figure of almost universal public derision in a span of a few short weeks.

“I couldn’t believe it. I thought it couldn’t be him. Just a month earlier, we were drinking together in front of his house and chatting happily about doing another project together,” Byun says. “When he was being investigated, I carefully texted him and told him to stay strong and call me if he needed anything. Shortly after that conversation, I heard the news [that he was dead]. I should have called him or just showed up at his house instead of texting him. I regret that now. I was so worried about [his wife] Hye-jin, and I was furious at the media.”

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates among developed nations. As of 2022 (the most recent year for which comparative data is available), the country recorded some 24.1 deaths per 100,000 citizens, significantly higher than Japan (15.3 deaths), the U.S. (14.5), France (12.1), the U.K. (7) and even Russia (21.6). In 2024, South Korea’s situation worsened significantly, with the suicide rate climbing to 28.3, the highest level in more than a decade.

The toll has arguably been even more severe among the famous. Korean entertainers who have taken their own lives in recent years have included K-pop star Sulli (2019), singer-actress Goo Hara (2019), actress Yoo Joo-eun (2022), singer Choi Sung-bong (2023), actress Jung Chae Yul (2023), singer-actor Moonbin (April 2023), singer Haesoo (May 2023), model and live-streamer Lim Ji-hye (June 2023) and actor Song Jae-lim (November).

The tragedies have continued into 2025. In February, actress Kim Sae-ron, 24, was found dead in her home. A former child star, the actress was considered one of the country’s most promising young talents until a drunk driving conviction in 2022 turned the public against her. In the wake of the incident, her starring performance was mostly edited out of Netflix’s high-profile Korean series Bloodhounds, which would be her final credit. (“We tried our best to minimize the actress’ appearance to decrease the viewers’ discomfort,” the show’s director said at the time.)

In death, Kim has become the subject of even greater tabloid attention. In March, the actress’ family went public with claims that 37-year-old actor Kim Soo-hyun, one of Korea’s most popular male stars, secretly dated Kim Sae-ron for six years, beginning when she was 15 years old and he was 27 (the age of consent in Korea is 16). The family also alleged the talent agency that repped the actress, which was actually founded and co-owned by Kim Soo-hyun, had demanded financial compensation for losses stemming from her canceled performances and endorsement deals. Coming from the company of her ex-boyfriend, who had broken off all contact with her after her downfall, the demands of repayment contributed to the mental state that resulted in Kim Sae-ron’s death, according to her family.

Kim Soo-hyun is now weathering his own public disgrace. After initially denying all of the family’s claims, he admitted to a relationship with Kim Sae-ron but said it didn’t begin until she was of age. The court of Korean public opinion has made its verdict clear, though, with influencers and fan communities speaking out against the actor en masse. Kim recently lost his last remaining endorsement deals — including one with Prada — and the release of his next big-budget drama series, Knock-Off, has been put on indefinite hold by Disney+. Recently, the actor has retreated from public view, and his last remaining fans have taken to expressing concern for his well-being.

In early 2024, the death of Lee — easily one of the most famous figures to fall from grace — generated a powerful sense of urgency within the Korean industry for change.

Bong, the country’s most beloved movie figure, and allies laid down the gauntlet with their public pressure campaign: the forces that had made the lives of public entertainers so perilous needed to be exposed and interrogated, and the human rights of artists urgently required greater protection. The group and its hundreds of signees, which began calling themselves the “Association of Solidarity of Cultural Artists,” took specific aim at the police and how they had handled Lee’s privacy. 

“We urge a thorough investigation by the authorities to ascertain whether there were any lapses in investigative security,” Bong said during the mournful press conference in Seoul. “An exhaustive investigation is requested to determine if there were any unlawful responses to the media.”

Officialdom took notice. In the days following Lee’s death, the Incheon Metropolitan Police Department’s chief gave a press conference defending investigators, asserting that his agency’s actions during the investigation were legal and justified — including Lee’s final 19-hour overnight session of questioning, which had come after four consecutive negative drug tests. 

In late January, however, anti-corruption investigators raided the Incheon station looking for evidence that officers had violated the country’s Personal Information Protection Act by leaking confidential details and materials concerning Lee’s case. Ultimately, two Incheon officers were sent to prosecutors, with one relieved of his duties after admitting to leaking an entire case report to the press. 

Most legal experts believe that if Lee had been an ordinary citizen, his case would have been dropped the moment he tested negative for drugs. But once the initial leak was disclosed — and the media frenzy ensued — the police came under significant pressure to stick a charge to the actor.

Critics of Korean police tactics also argue that the initial impulse to leak was far from an aberration. Rather, it was the usual response to distorted incentives rife within the Korean force.

“When police leak information to the media, it is often cases involving celebrities — mainly because the public interest in celebrities is so much greater than that of politicians,” says An Junhung, an attorney at Seoul-based firm Son & Partners who specializes in drug crime. “The more media exposure the investigator gets, the more likely he is to be promoted. It’s an open secret. When officers are promoted to a high-ranking position in the police or prosecutor’s office, they usually have a history of investigating cases involving celebrities and famous people.”

The aggressive official rhetoric surrounding President Yoon’s drug war also upped these incentives while lowering safeguards, experts say. “This administration is going to root out scores of offenders and will come down on them so hard that they will shriek,” a justice in Yoon’s Supreme Prosecutors’ Office (equivalent to the U.S. Justice Department) told reporters as the president’s policy was being rolled out months before Lee’s case took fire.

Amid the two officers’ dismissal, the Korean National Police Commission said it was introducing a comprehensive set of data-leakage prevention measures to make it easier to fire officers who mishandle investigative information. Two opposition party members in the Korean legislature also revealed plans to introduce a bill, tentatively named the Lee Sun-kyun Prevention Act, to increase the legal protections of suspects’ privacy during investigations. It remains pending in the country’s National Assembly.

The attorney, An, is unconvinced that the wholesale changes Bong and his cohort called for have been implemented. “If another celebrity drug case were to happen now, would the police be any different? I don’t think so,” he says. “The underlying issues have not been addressed. The culture of meritocracy within the police organization has not changed, nor has the attitude toward the sensitivity of personal information in reporting on celebrity cases — especially drug cases.”

Before the human rights of the famous can be handled with more care in the event of allegations, the deep social stigma and purely punitive attitude toward drug abuse in Korea would have to change, An argues.

“It may surprise people outside of Korea, but there are no specialized drug rehabilitation centers in Korea,” he says. “We are more concerned with prosecuting and convicting drug-related crimes than recognizing users as patients who are in need of support and proper treatment.”

Local public health advocates have also pointed out that it’s not as if the Korean population — coping with famously intense career and social pressures — isn’t finding ways to self-medicate. South Korea consistently ranks among the world’s top countries for alcohol consumption and binge drinking per capita.

“South Korea is a country full of working, or functional, alcoholics,” Lee Hae-kook, the director of the Korean Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and a doctor at the Uijeongbu St. Mary’s Hospital, recently told the Hankyoreh newspaper for a report on the issue.

When Korean celebrities do dabble with controlled substances, the drug they tend to favor is one designed to provide an oblivion-like release instead of euphoria — yet another indication of the profound psychic pressures they face. During the past decade, Korean celebrities and high-profile business leaders have regularly been arrested for illegal, unprescribed use of propofol, the powerful anesthetic best known for its role in the accidental death of Michael Jackson. Far from a party enhancer, the drug seems to serve as a refuge for the most desperate among the moneyed set who simply want to switch off their brains for a while.

Those charged with propofol abuse — in many cases for paying doctors to illegally inject them hundreds of times over periods of months or years — have included major actors Yoo Ah-in, Hyun Young, Park Si-yeon, Lee Seung-yeon and Jang Mi In Ae; actor Ha Jung-woo; and Samsung Group scion Lee Jae-yong.

In 2021, Choi Whee-sung, aka Wheesung — the once high-flying singer-songwriter widely credited with introducing R&B singing to K-pop — was found guilty of purchasing and using propofol. He paid a fine and avoided jail time, but the usual public downfall ensued — intense media scrutiny, aggressive cyberbullying, disappearing career opportunities. On March 10, 2025, he was found dead in his apartment in Seoul’s northern Gwangjin-gu District (the authorities have yet to reveal a cause of death).

“Drugs such as cocaine, heroin and marijuana are not as easily accessible to average Koreans. On the other hand, people — celebrities in particular — are more exposed to propofol as it’s commonly used as anesthesia in cosmetic procedures,” explains Hong Sung-jin, a specialist in anesthesiology and pain medicine at Bucheon St. Mary’s Hospital. South Korea also has some of the world’s highest rates of cosmetic surgery, and such procedures are considered de rigueur for the country’s entertainers.

“The substance could be appealing for those who are under high stress,” adds Hong, “because its sedative effects can make the person drop everything and feel refreshed when they wake up.”

The call for a more compassionate drug policy is becoming a refrain in Korea’s slowly growing mental health community.

“Mental health issues, including drug problems, need to be de-stigmatized,” says Chung, Maum Clinic’s psychiatrist. “Up until Lee’s death, many anti-drug campaigns focused on the message that if you use drugs even once, your life is over. This is the wrong approach.”

He adds: “For celebrities, the stigma of being labeled a drug addict can mean the end of their careers. And how would actual drug users feel when they see such a campaign? The message puts an end to any hope of recovery.”

In a complicated case of two steps forward, one step back, Korea’s biggest star to ever to be brought down by a drug conviction happened to receive an exceedingly rare opportunity for a comeback this year — and it came in the form of the country’s most popular TV show of all time.

Choi Seung-hyun, better known by his stage name T.O.P., rose to mega-stardom as the lead rapper of the breakthrough K-pop group BIGBANG in the early 2000s. In 2017, while taking a break from his burgeoning acting and recording career to serve his mandatory Korea military service, allegations came to light that Choi had smoked marijuana on four occasions in the preceding year with a young woman at his home. After initially denying the charges, Choi eventually confessed and received a 10-month jail sentence. The day following his indictment, he was found unconscious and nearly died after overdosing on the benzodiazepine he had been prescribed for anxiety. As with all such scandals, Choi’s legions of former fans turned on him, and he became an object of widespread social media scorn.

“I deserve punishment for hurting my group members, agency, public, fans and family,” he said in a written statement released at the time by YG, the flagship K-pop agency that had signed him. “I’ll regret this for tens of thousands of years.”

Over the eight years since, Choi remained blackballed by the entirety of the Korean industry — until the production of the second season of Squid Game.

Hwang Dong-hyuk, the quirky creator of the hit death-game series, which remains Netflix’s most watched title of all time, made the bold choice to resuscitate Choi’s career by casting him to play a key villain character in Squid Game‘s high-stakes sophomore season. After the casting was unveiled, however, it was instantly apparent that the former pop star and actor remained controversial. Local broadcaster MBC blurred his face when a short segment about the return of Squid Game aired on its popular Live This Morning.

During the limited press he has done for Squid Game, Choi has expressed nothing but polite remorse about his past and gratitude for the second chance. But if his Squid Game casting represents progress for Korea’s usually unforgiving celebrity culture, it comes with caveats. Local industry insiders have noted that Squid Game is financed and produced by U.S.-owned Netflix, not a Korean studio or network. And then there’s the character Choi plays: Thanos, a pill-popping, badly tattooed, drugged-out celebrity rapper — a figure who is so loathsome and broadly drawn that he reads like a cruel caricature of the Korean public’s perceptions of the lowest point in Choi’s personal biography. In one scene, Choi, as Thanos, excitedly takes pills from a secret stash of stimulants while plotting a nasty scheme against his rivals, and another character looks on and warns a young friend not to indulge like Thanos because, “Once you take it, you’ll never be normal again.” 

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter shortly after the release of season two of Squid Game, Choi said he understood his assignment was to portray Thanos as “an absurd loser character” whom the audience would love to hate. And he clearly gave it his all, inhabiting the rapper with menace, buffoonery and repugnant histrionics. But Choi says playing the character also caused him pain.

“Honestly, during filming, when there were hundreds of cast and crew there and I had to do the scenes where Thanos actually takes drugs, it would be a lie for me to say it wasn’t challenging, because it required me to come face to face with a part of me that causes deep pain,” he said. “The amount of love and support that I received and felt during my 20s, and the fall that came after — all of that was a first for me. And that whole experience drove me into intense darkness.”

Choi also hopes fans will remember that — unlike his clownish avatar, whose raps on the show are clumsy and cringey — he always approached his music with passion and seriousness.

“Over the past eight years or so, I have been focusing only on creating music,” he tells THR. “Within that very intense darkness, I was able to relearn the reason for my existence through creating music, and it allowed me to get back on my feet. Right now, all I’m focused on is hoping that I can share that music with the fans — all of the fans out there who I have hurt so much in the past.”

This story appeared in the May 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.