May you find peace, Choi Jin Shil

(All images used in this post credited to Sports Chosun)

I’m sorry for the rambling, kind of just angry, frustrated, opinionated, all over the place post. Its really simply meant for me to take all of this out so I feel better and I don’t even know if it makes sense at all. I just have this negative foreboding and I need to write and get my thoughts out to get rid of it. No point reading if you don’t know about the Korean industry.

Ask A Korean wrote a beautiful, fitting tribute to Choi Jin Shil. It is simple but explains why her death is such a shock and a tragedy. http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2008/10/actress-choe-jinsil-40-found-dead-at.html

For information on Choi Jin Shil’s death and the other recent tragedies: http://www.dramabeans.com/2008/10/more-on-choi-jin-shils-suicide/

I’ve been thinking of this constantly from the moment I heard the news and I just had to let it out. Last year in February, I read about the very unfortunate and untimely death of Jung Da Bin, who committed suicide at just 27. JDB was a gorgeous, talented, beautiful actress, and unfortunately one who had been distressed with the pressure of her career. She was one of my favorite actresses, and it was sincerely quite sad. Since then, one after another, I’ve heard all these cases of accidents and suicides, and it seems like this is a bad year for the entertainment world, and especially for the Korean ent. world (though we can’t forget Heath Ledger’s and Bernie Mac’s death).

One wonders why the death of a celebrity affects us…regardless of whether he/she was an actor, musician, politician, etc. etc., we all feel a sense of loss despite never having met them or having known them. You have allowed these strangers into your world, into your life. You may have listened to their music and let it guide your thoughts and ease your mind. You may have recieved happiness by watching their movies and shows, or been affected by the portrayal of a character you identified with. These strangers gave you moments of laughter, of sadness, they may have made you cry, made you look at your life in a different way….they may have created your visions of romance and love and marriage and parenthood. Celebrities are individuals we voluntarily let into our lives, into our minds and hearts, and their loss is no small loss. People feel it, sense it to be very real, sometimes equating it to the loss of a loved one.

This year, a lot of the celebrities I admired and liked, and others who I did not know too well, have passed away. What makes it worse in the case of the Korean ent. world is that there seems to be a recent spate of them one after another–Lee Eon, Ahn Jae Hwan, and now Choi Jin Shil–it almost scares you to open the latest news and watch another death out on the front page. With this latest death, and the death of Ahn Jae Hwan, I feel this anger and frustrationg at the netizen world. I won’t recap the case details because those who care will know. But while Ahn Jae Hwan’s suicide is a result of the various pressures in his life, Choi Jin Shil’s suicide this morning can be directly attributed to the cruelty of the netizens. Posts criticizing her, blaming her for AJH’s death, inflammatory and deragotary comments circulated widely. Now, you think, she’s a celebrity. Why doesn’t she just take it? Can’t she just live with it? Celebrities in America put up with the kind of mud slinging and slander because of the kind of society it is…it is not the same in a country where your reputation means everything. More than that, imagine being wrongly blamed for the fact that your best friend is a widow, for the death of one of your friends. Imagine, firstly, handling the pain of that loss, trying to support your friend, and then, amidst that, finding all this rubbish floating around. You may be just called in by the police for routine investigation, but amongst all the cruel comments, criticisms, you feel like the world has turned against you. And maybe, amongst all that stress, you begin to believe it. At 37, having spent her life building her life, her career, working hard for her family, having gone through a turbulent marriage and divorce, raising her kids…imagine what it must have taken to just make it all black and hopeless.

I think living requires an unbelievable amount of courage and strength. Suicide is not cowardly or morally or religiously wrong in my book…we all fight to live, all the time, and we all go through so much. We all have a breaking point, that point after which all our faith, our hope, our courage, our positive thinking simply fails. Human beings are very courageous in general: most of us live long, continue to struggle and fight, even in the kind of world we live in today. But sometimes, when the world just crumbles and you just can’t make sense of it and find your way out…there it ends. I cannot make the judgement of right or wrong, and I can’t empathize or sympathize. The only thing I really feel is sadness for those affected. For those left behind who must live with one more burden over everything else. I feel so much for all those who are left crying and in mourning, who will think of that person every day of their life. I can’t imagine how Jin Shil’s children, her brother, her mother, her best friends, all the people she left behind must feel. For years she has been lighting up the screen and people’s homes with her talented, bright, wonderful acting, portraying roles that women can really identify with. Her personal struggle has given courage to women, she is admired for persevering through her divorce, for being a single parent, for changing the last names of her children to her own in a patriarchal society. Choi Jin Shil, you were a great, beautiful, talented, strong woman. What was the breaking point?

It was the terrible, cruel, malicious rubbish, the work of people who have nothing better to do with their time than talk rubbish and spread evil rumors. Seriously, the levels to which netizens in Korea are invested in their celebrities are scary, be it good or bad. And its the bad that really makes it a really dangerous phenomenon. I for one am just sickened and angry, and I wish the laws would be tighter and face this problem more directly. It is not about being able to take criticism…an actor’s livelihood is based on what the world thinks of them. They earn and get jobs based on how much people like them. So of course attacks matter, and the level and intensity has to get you when you start to wonder: is this how everyone thinks? Is this the end for me? In my experience, I have seen that Korean actors, actresses, singers, etc. all work extremely hard (more so than any other entertainment industry in my opinion). They work like dogs, no joke, and they don’t earn as much, they have the fame and the love and they thrive on that and do even more. They are grateful to their fans, and they try to work hard for their fans, to do their best for their fans, to a dangerous point (emotionally and physically). The entertainment culture is very different and celebrities and their following are very invested in each other. And it is this power that is being inhumanely misused. These people are doing jobs like all of us do, they are living lives like all of us, they are trying and failing and being imperfect humans like all of us. How can you attack them personally time and time again, how can you beat them down mercilessly, how can you repeatedly attack their integrity? It is a scary, scary place, and I don’t envy any of these celebrities one bit. They have been physically attacked, verbally abused, and now attacked so viciously through the internet that it has led them to be traumatized and emotionally unstable.

Granted there was a lot else that led to this, but I can’t help feeling that this was a big part of Choi Jin Shil’s unfortunate decision. Yes, she was suffering from depression, but she was also taking care of that. She had a support system, friends, family. She had a lot of problems, I know, a lot of issues and complications, but when you’re already in such a tough place, the vile spouted by hundreds and thousands of people WILL get to you. There needs to be some kind of action taken, some laws, some limits and boundaries. Or shall we just continue to watch young, beautiful, talented, hard working people just be driven to the ends of their tolerance?

RIP, Choi Jin Shil. And I pray that Jung Seon Hee, whose state I simply can’t imagine, will find some kind of support and strength somewhere, some kind of courage to bring her life back together. I pray for peace especially for her, for Choi Jin Young, who lost his sister, for Shin Ae, who lost a beautiful friend, for her mother, who lost a beloved daughter, for her children, who lost a mother that they didn’t have long enough.