Actress Choi Jin Sil Suicide and Death
I was never a big fan of Choi Jin Sil, but I admired her when she got her children’s custody after her painful divorce. I gave her big claps - quietly in my mind - when she succeeded in changing her kids’ last name to hers because I know how tough it is to make it done in Korea. She might not have had a grand intention to achieve something in Korean women’s equalization movement, but at least she did her best not to follow unjust social conventions and she made it!
I was also delighted when I heard that she made a successful comeback on a very popular TV series as a divorced single working mom because basically what it meant was that she disapproved of an unreasonable trend in Korea’s entertainment world. As easily assumed, actresses’ popularity are most likely judged by their beauty and youth rather than their acting skills and talent. Actresses’ expectancy is a lot shorter than actors’ because of this unfair objectification of actresses in a patriarchal society like Korea. She took the rougher road and she made it again!
Even with all these positive and strong images of hers, neither I was a fan of hers nor bothered to watch her big comeback show when it was so popular in Korea. (The most popular ones are ‘Rose Life’ and ‘My Last Scandal (The Last Scandal of My Life)’ since her comeback.) ‘My Love, My Bride’ (1990) was the only movie that I saw years ago that she stared in. I don’t remember much about her acting - that was her early stage of acting - but she definitely left an impression of a cute and angry bride.
With no doubt, I’d agree that she was one of the biggest stars or more “naturally” - yes, she was everywhere on commercials and TV series, but cheerfully and happily, not disagreeably - a “national actress” even to me, who had no more than neutral opinion about her.
It was absolutely such a shocking news to me as it was, I believe, to most Koreans. I know it was not only because she was one of the cutest ones, not only because she was a “national actor” loved by so many Koreans, not only because she had been around for twenty years, but also because she always got up again after heartbreaking hardships and sent the message to people not to give up on life. I know her life no more than an average Korean would know, but my thought is that she was a kind of person who wanted to be true and sincere to everything just as her name represents. Jin Sil means truth in Korean!
I only imagine how lonely she must have felt at the last moment. How hopeless the world must have looked to her. Maybe that smaller hill she confronted seemed too much after she had used up so much of her strength to get over all those hard and steep mountains of her life. I only imagine. I can only imagine, with my share of loneliness and despair, how desperate one can get and feel the death is the only straw to pull for hope.
It’s only natural that so many Koreans are shaken by her death. Her death might have them ask themselves the very question: is life just vain, and is there hope left, especially in this developed but humanly disappointing time?
That’s happening to me. I find it difficult to get over her death and its impact is slow and steady. It’s still blur to me. In reality, I don’t have close Korean friends to talk about it, who would understand how appalling it is. But in my own world, it’s because I’ve been trying naively to avoid the concept of death. I still haven’t got used the idea that my mentor, my uncle doesn’t exist in this world any more. Everything about death is still enigmatic and fearful to face.
What does death bring to us (ones who are left) and to them (ones who left)?
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BTW, I happened to read an article from Time regarding Choi Jin Sil’s Suicide. I couldn’t help frowning upon at the sentence “… an apparent suicide, she has become a symbol of the difficulties women face in this deeply conservative yet technologically savvy society”, unpleased with inaccuracy in interpreting her death, yet I have to agree that it’s a shame Korean society is still heavily patriarchal, people judge others with double standards, so living as a single divorced mom is enormously challenging.
I hope the Korean government will establish practical laws to support single working moms as well as come up with a constitutionally-legitimate regulation law regarding ak-peul (evil-comments, source of false rumors on the Internet, allegedly the direct reason of her suicide). Most importantly, Koreans should change their point of view.
Peace to her in the other world….
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