A fourth entertainer has committed suicide:
Actor Kim Ji-who was found dead in his house in an apparent suicide, police said Wednesday, the fourth suicide by an entertainer in just one month.
Songpa Police Station confirmed the 23-year-old hung himself at his home in Jamsil, southern Seoul, Monday.
Police said they found a suicide note at the scene, saying, “I’m lonely and in a difficult situation. Please cremate my body.”
What drove him to suicide is especially infuriating:
Police said his suicide reflects public prejudice toward gay people and their difficulty in succeeding in the entertainment industry.
Following the announcement of his sexual orientation, Kim’s management agency did not renew his contract and many TV programs and fashion shows cancelled his appearances. His blog was bombarded with numerous messages denouncing his sexual orientation.
The nasty comments apparently continued even after news of his death broke.
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s very sad. What’s going on with all the suicides? I thought people had largely gotten over the homophobia when Hong Seok-chun returned to TV, at least in the industry.
“I’m lonely and in a difficult situation. Please cremate my body.”
What a shame to lose a person who had such a way with words.
Koreans are so group-oriented and it’s disturbing that role models like entertainers are somehow gravitating towards suicide. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear reports in the future of suicide notes that mention an entertainer’s name that committed suicide as an influence in someone’s decision to take his life.
The reasons why a young talented person takes his or her life are immaterial to me. The actual decision to commit suicide and the feelings that lead to it (that there is no hope, that a problem will never get better, that no one can help) are at the core of the problem and I hope responsible adults can help young people gain some perspective and guide them away from making such a rash decision.
That’s simply tragic.
The government needs to amend or enforce a law that would allow it to charge the people who left hateful messages on his blog with a hate crime.
4? name them so i can sell caricatures of them in Insadong this weekend!
Death has been “BEAT TO DEATH” on
this blog lately. I seriously love
life, left and right. Shake up your
life…not mine.
I think we all have to brace ourselves for more suicides to come, in the industry or amongst us civilians. The Won is trading at 1380 this morning to the dollar. If the economy tanks even more, which is highly unlikely, I wouldnt be surprised to see some more fucked-up unimaginable shit.
highly likely i mean
Bring it on. Suddenly there is not a Darwinian to be found amongst us? The herd must be culled from time to time.
Everyone pretends or acts as if Koreans are all familiar with the psychological nature of suicide, or that there are absolutely NOT psychological/cultural dysfunctions in that culture/society that would warrant such behavior. If anything we should be wondering why there arent millions more of these suicides.
Life is for the living. There is nothing noble in their deaths to celebrate or really care about. We seem to care just because they are celebrities? Please. If it was just another faceless Korean living in a closet of an apartment with some menial job none of us would even give a rat’s ass. Enough is enough.
Bring it on. Suddenly there is not a Darwinian to be found amongst us? The herd must be culled from time to time.
IronChefKorean, you’re an ass. Our humanity has raised us above conditions where we recognize the value of human lives and no longer pit each other in a constant fight for survival.
There is nothing noble in their deaths to celebrate or really care about.
It is being treated as tragic not noble.
We seem to care just because they are celebrities? Please. If it was just another faceless Korean living in a closet of an apartment with some menial job none of us would even give a rat’s ass.
You speak for yourself only.
I can only describe IronChefKorean’s post this way. Mean spirited disgusting rubbish. How about if I say the same things about one of his loved ones? How’s he going to feel?
“sorrows always come in battalions…”
- Hamlet
Unfortunately for the thin skinned, whose initials are user-81, I never cared for bandwagon approval. The truth is the truth. Suicide is cowardice and aggression, period. The idea that you lemmings have been so brainwashed into wringing your hands and furrowing your brows in pseudo-anxious concern and ersatz sympathy is revolting. These are flawed people worthy only of study or discussion if we are to learn how to avoid their fate. This goes especially for that one female celebrity whom everyone is SOOO shocked about. She killed herself, leaving her children shattered. If there is justice in afterlife, there is a special place in hell reserved for vermin such as her. As for this homosexual’s suicide, the Korean media “fascination” with this meta-story, and all of your “sensitivities,” good riddance.
And as for CM: What if it were my loved one? Well I am more confident in intervention and reason to dissuade said loved one from committing suicide. And even if he/she were to carry through, ultimately it is her choice/responsibility. I just so happen to believe in an afterlife and a God of Justice. Im sure all accounts will be settled there.
Misery loves company, and yes, sorrow comes in battalions, but thank God we are alive. Let us concern ourselves with the affairs of the living, not the woes of the un-grateful dead. If you truly are so remorseful over these suicides, worry not. In good time, you shall join them in the afterlife if you so wish.
Until then, is there no news of this world worth debate?
The world is a harsh place. Rather than the government trying to legislate every aspect of personal behavior, families and schools should teach kids how to respond when others bother or hurt them verbally or physically.
@Ironchef
If you have nothing good to say, why not say nothing? I doubt anyone here is interested in your callous, bigoted, self-righteous prattle. Whatever you ‘happen to believe in’ keep to yourself, or take it up with your “God of Justice.”
@Ironchef
If you have nothing good to say, why not say nothing? I doubt anyone here is interested in your callous, bigoted, self-righteous prattle. Whatever you ‘happen to believe in’ keep to yourself, or take it up with your “God of Justice.”
“It is being treated as tragic not noble.”
Sure. He could have sued his managers and those harassing him, thus advancing gay rights in Korea, or he could have simply left for a more tolerant country. But, obviously, he was not in the mental state to take one of the more logical options.
@Ironchef
When someone has a heart attack, or develops stomache cancer, we can choose to denounce their life-style or eating habits, and blaim them for their own demise This is of course not always the case, since people who live healthy lives also succumb to the same deseases.
Unfortunately, people whose minds are not healthy, be it schizophrenia or manic depression, receive even less sympathy from the less “evolved” members of society who fail to realize that the brain is yet another physical part of the human body that can, through no fault of the owner, not work properly.
Your mind may well be a case in point. Is your callousness and narrow mindedness a matter of nature or nurture? Do you deserve compassion or distain?
I wish the world were a better place, and that there was much more happiness and much less hate. How can hating make your life happy?
I wish that people treated themselves and others with more consideration and kindness.
I wish there was much more wisdom in the world, and much less ignorance.
Have a nice day.
Touchy touchy Pohang. No need. Im not the one who killed myself. They did. And perhaps they are taking it up with their maker as we speak. I am more interested in how to LIVE, not how to die, or how someone else died. Religious prattle you say? Hardly so you filthy little atheist. Not once did I impose my beliefs on anyone. Yet it is you, like the rest of your scarred bitter ilk that take it upon themselves to scourge themselves with words taken way out of context. Again I believe that there is a God and a moment in the afterlife for reckoning of our actions. Hardly bigoted, nor self-righteous. Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps I’m right. Perhaps you would like to follow in these prestigious footsteps of suicidal fools and find out? But while were on the subject you brought up, an atheist is one who searches for God like a mouse searches for a cat. You are misguided at best, retarded at worst. Only cowards like you believe in nothing, keep everything to themselves, rot inside, and hang themselves in self pity.
SomeguyinKorea: We dont know of his mental state, only of his dysfunction. If he were crazy, we would talk about a crazy guy committing suicide, not a run of the mill homosexual. He failed to take more logical options. Still yet, that one celeb chick failed even more because of the children she ruined. Tragic, yes. Worth losing sleep over? No. Thats all I’m saying.
Hitest: You speak so longingly of a world that does not exist, you very well must be a Christian.
Of course if you are, you will remember that it is an unfair, broken world in which we live.
Kim Ji Who?
IronChefKoreanI am more interested in how to LIVE, not how to die, or how someone else died.
How noble, except that you seemed to be encouraging suicide:
And you smeared everyone here as hypocrites for only caring when someone famous dies. Crawl back under your rock.
Some people, like me, come to the blog to have conversations that they could reasonably have offline at a party or in a bar, and this forum lets us do that when we’re not hanging out with friends.
Some people, like ironchef (at least in this thread), come here to use the online environment to try to force conversations onto people that no one would be willing to have in the real world, because his counterparties would just walk away from him, shaking their heads in disbelief at his total lack of social skills and unbelievably poor judgement in carrying out the art of conversation.
@IronChef
You speak with such a lack of compassion that you must be an atheist.
That makes us both wrong in our presumptions.
What kind of God lets men kill children ? Who made man? Is mankind not then one of God’s great cosmic disasters ? And having created such a miserable creature, who could then sit back and allow the pain and suffering of the innocent people in the world, under the guise of free will ? Who created free will? Guess He didn’t know what he was doing…well what a f*ck up that was. He knew what He was doing then? What a huge f*ck up that was then.
You can have Him in all His mysterious ways. I think you probably deserve each other.
Let us all pray to the Lord, our Father in Heaven, that IronChef does not commit suicide.
What a shame there is no God to answer our prayers.
It would seem that IronChefKorean really does know how to stir up the pot.
Well, It is a difficult topic to discuss and you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. He sure jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire in this thread. He has been quiet lately, maybe he couldn’t stand the heat and got out of the kitchen. The other commenters went overboard anyway, you what they say about too many cooks.
IronChefKorean: 싸가지 없어.
Can this profusion of bad writing, sophomoric thinking and lame humor that we see in IronChef and kerplunk be anything other than another swlee comeback attempt?
THAT would be one suicide I could get behind!
slim; Please get some help! Very seriously ill statement you made: “THAT would be one suicide I could get behind!”
hitest: Do some research, God did not make evil, it is all man’s doing, therefore it is not up to God to stop it. God only gave man freewill. Some think even that was a mistake given what man has done with it. But then that is not for us to judge God’s plan.
Suicide is the ultimate selfish act, it harms everyone that is even remotely close. But, it should be discussed openly as it has been here. However, character assassinations are unproductive and diversions from the real emotions and issues of the topic.
Some of us have actual lives outside of this forum. Additionally, much to the dismay of folks like Slim, our time is also spent on other websites, not just this one, waiting like a girl with a pregnancy test, for some intellectual charlatan to make his inane retort.
My point still stands, though simpletons may not yet comprehend.
Their suicides should be treated as acts of aggression, and examples of fatal backward stupidity. Compassion, understanding should be saved for more deserving folks in the news, and in our lives.
As for my thoughts on the afterlife, they are precisely that. If you disagree, again, feel free to go investigate for yourself and report back to us in this forum.
There is no need to become emotional over these sad failures of life.
And to the ignoble defenders of death, you cowardly fools, Kerplunk, Slim, User81, etc: I accept your fruitless testaments to your ignorance. No excuses or explanations are further necessary for none would be remotely satisfactory.
Compassion is wasted on a dead person, suicidee or not.
Thanks IronChef, it feels good to be called an ignoble defender of something.
I think?
Slim, griss4mill: what is the story about swlee?
31 – I was merely carping about the quality of your thinking and writing and how it reminded me of earlier discredited trolls and should be kept to yourself.
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