SEOUL – Within the about 1,000 days between her drunken-driving crash in Could 2022 and her dying, South Korean mainstream information organizations revealed at the least round 2,000 tales on movie actor Kim Sae-rom.
They illustrate how the native media typically cowl a celeb’s fall from grace. Beforehand one of many brightest younger stars in South Korean cinema, Kim was condemned and ridiculed for driving drunk; for speaking about her monetary struggles after dropping roles; for taking a job at a espresso store; for trying a comeback in theater; for going out with associates as an alternative of “exhibiting regret”; and for being seen smiling on set whereas capturing an indie film.
After the 24-year-old actor was discovered useless at her house Sunday, the headlines predictably swung to calling for adjustments to the way in which celebrities are handled within the public enviornment.
Kim’s dying, which police contemplate a suicide, provides to a rising checklist of high-profile celebrity deaths within the nation, which some specialists attribute to the big stress celebrities face beneath the gaze of a relentlessly unforgiving media that seizes on each misstep.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: In South Korea, callers can obtain 24-hour counseling by the suicide prevention hotline 1577-0199, the “Life Line” service at 1588-9191, the “Hope Telephone” at 129 and the “Youth Telephone” at 1388.
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This is a have a look at the extraordinary stress confronted by South Korean celebrities who fall from grace.
A sudden fall from grace
South Korea is notoriously harsh on its celebrities, significantly ladies.
Kim rose to stardom as a toddler actor with the 2010 hit crime thriller “The Man from Nowhere” and garnered acclaim and recognition for her appearing in motion pictures and TV dramas for years.
However that modified after Could 18, 2022, when Kim crashed a automobile right into a tree and {an electrical} transformer whereas driving drunk in southern Seoul. She posted a handwritten apology on Instagram and reportedly compensated round 60 retailers that misplaced energy quickly due to the crash, however that did little to defuse unfavorable protection and she or he struggled to seek out appearing work.
When a Seoul court docket issued a 200 million received ($139,000) positive over the crash in April 2023, Kim expressed her fears concerning the media to reporters, saying many articles about her personal life had been unfaithful.
“I’m too scared to say something about them,” she stated.
Relentless unfavorable protection
Within the wake of Kim’s drunken-driving crash, celeb gossip channels on YouTube started posting unfavorable movies about her personal life, suggesting with out offering proof that she was exaggerating her monetary straits by working at espresso retailers, and arguing that social media posts exhibiting her socializing with associates meant she wasn’t exhibiting sufficient regret.
Different entertainers, particularly feminine, have struggled to seek out work after run-ins with the legislation, together with drunken driving or substance abuse, and specialists say a lot of them are reluctant to hunt remedy for psychological well being issues like despair, fearing additional unfavorable protection.
Kwon Younger-chan, a comedian-turned-scholar who leads a gaggle serving to celebrities with psychological well being points, stated celebrities typically really feel helpless when the protection turns unfavorable after spending years fastidiously cultivating their public picture. Kwon, who stayed with Kim’s kinfolk throughout a standard three-day funeral course of, stated her household is contemplating authorized motion towards a YouTube creator with a whole lot of 1000’s of subscribers for what they describe as groundless assaults on Kim’s personal life.
Peter Jongho Na, a professor of psychiatry on the Yale Faculty of Drugs, lamented on Fb that South Korean society had turn into a large model of “Squid Game,” the brutal Netflix survival drama, “abandoning individuals who make errors or fall behind, appearing as if nothing occurred.”
Media blamed for celeb deaths
The Nationwide Police Company stated officers discovered no indicators of foul play at Kim’s house and that she left no observe.
However a spate of high-profile deaths has sparked discussions about how information organizations cowl the personal lives of celebrities and whether or not floods of important on-line feedback are harming their psychological well being. Related conversations occurred after the 2008 dying of mega film star Choi Jin-sil; the dying of her former baseball star husband, Cho Sung-min, in 2013; the deaths of Ok-Pop singers Sulli and Goo Hara in 2019; and the dying of “Parasite” actor Lee Sun-kyun in 2023.
Sensational however unsubstantiated claims like from social media are broadly recycled and amplified by conventional media shops as they compete for viewers consideration, stated Hyun-jae Yu, a communications professor at Seoul’s Sogang College.
Combating a pointy decline in conventional media readership, he stated, media flip to masking YouTube drama as the simplest technique to drive up site visitors, typically skipping the work of reporting and verifying info.
Following the 2019 deaths of Sulli and Goo Hara, which had been broadly attributed to cyberbullying and sexual harassment each within the public and media, lawmakers proposed varied measures to discourage harsh on-line feedback. These included increasing real-name necessities and strengthening web sites’ necessities to weed out hate speech and false info, however none of those proposed legal guidelines handed.
Reforms stay elusive
South Korean administration businesses are getting more and more lively in taking authorized motion to guard their entertainers from on-line bullying. Hybe, which manages a number of Ok-Pop teams together with BTS, publishes common updates about lawsuits it’s submitting towards social media commentators it deems malicious.
However Yu stated it is essential for mainstream media firms to strengthen self-regulation and restrict their use of YouTube content material as information sources. Authorities authorities might additionally compel YouTube and different social media platforms to take higher duty for content material created by their customers, he stated, together with actively eradicating problematic movies and stopping creators from monetizing them.
The South Korean workplace of Google, YouTube’s guardian firm, did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
Heo Chanhaeng, an govt director on the Middle for Media Accountability and Human Rights, stated information organizations and web sites ought to contemplate shutting down the feedback sections on leisure tales fully.
“Her personal life was indiscriminately reported past what was needed,” Heo stated. “That’s not a official matter of public curiosity.”
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