Actor Ha-young. [KBS 2TV talk variety show "Rooftop Troublemakers"]
Actor Ha-young. [KBS 2TV talk variety show "Rooftop Troublemakers"]

Advertisers have begun cutting ties with actor Ha-young after the pro-Japanese colonial-era activities of her great-grandfather, physician Ahn Sang-ho, came to light. The controversy has also renewed attention to how other celebrities — Kang Dong-won, Lee Ji-ah and Jeon Beom-seon — handled similar scandals in the past.

The controversy began after Ha-young appeared on KBS 2TV's talk variety show "Rooftop Troublemakers" and mentioned that her family had produced doctors for four generations. The remark prompted speculation on online communities that her great-grandfather was Ahn Sang-ho (1872–1927), and as his historical record was revisited, allegations of pro-Japanese collaboration surfaced.

Ha-young's agency, Bisters Entertainment, reversed course Tuesday, issuing an official statement confirming that "records do in fact exist showing that great-grandfather Ahn Sang-ho appeared on the list of council members of the Daejeong Chinmokoe in 1916" — walking back its position from just a day earlier, when it had dismissed the allegations as groundless.

Ahn graduated from Tokyo Jikei Medical School in 1902 and became the first Korean to obtain a Japanese medical license. He later returned to Korea, served as a royal physician to Emperor Sunjong and as a contracted doctor for the Yi Royal Household Office, and opened the country's first Western-style medical clinic.

Particularly contentious are remarks he made in an interview with the Maeil Sinbo at the time.

The Maeil Sinbo, an organ of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, published an article in its Dec. 10, 1918 edition headlined "The household of Dr. Ahn Sang-ho, fully assimilated into the homeland."

In the interview, Ahn said, "I am the same as a Japanese person — I wear Japanese clothing and my wife is a Japanese woman," adding that "all the rules of the household, the food and the lifestyle follow Japanese customs."

He also said his children did not know the Korean language because it was not spoken at home, and that he had almost no contact with Koreans. The Government-General used the interview as a model of everyday "Naeseon Ilche" among successful Korean intellectuals to justify colonial rule.

Naeseon Ilche — literally "the interior and Joseon as one body" — was a colonial slogan promoted by Imperial Japan during its occupation of Korea to push for the complete assimilation of Koreans into Japanese society.

Actor Kang Dong-won. [Yonhap]
Actor Kang Dong-won. [Yonhap]

As the controversy spread, Samsung Electronics set all six advertisement videos featuring Ha-young as a model for its Samsung Art TV product to private on its official YouTube channel Tuesday. Other videos related to the Samsung Art TV line remain publicly visible; only the six featuring Ha-young were taken down.

An advertisement for "Artid," a brand under clothing company Eastend Co., was also made private.

The controversy over Ha-young's ancestry has brought renewed scrutiny to how other entertainers navigated similar situations in the past.

Actor Kang Dong-won once mentioned in an interview that his maternal great-grandfather had been involved in gold mining, but faced fierce criticism after it emerged that the man, Lee Jong-man, was listed in a dictionary of pro-Japanese collaborators.

Kang apologized for his inadequate response, saying he "had not accurately understood the wrongful conduct of my maternal great-grandfather."

He went on to appear in "1987: When the Day Comes," a film about the pro-democracy movement, playing the late martyr Lee Han-yeol. He said he approached the role with a sense of "repaying a debt" and personally visited the bereaved family before and after filming to offer a sincere apology. It later emerged that he had also anonymously donated 200 million won to the Lee Han-yeol Memorial Foundation.

Actor Lee Ji-ah, meanwhile, had initially been celebrated as coming from a distinguished family after media reports highlighted her family's history of funding education. She took a direct public stance after it was revealed that her grandfather had made large donations to pro-Japanese national defense organizations during the colonial period.

Lee said she became financially independent at 18 and had not received any monetary support from her parents, adding that she had cut ties with her family more than 10 years ago due to its complicated history.

She also said that after first learning of the issue through a 2011 news report, she had visited the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities multiple times to review relevant materials and study the subject. "I deeply recognize my grandfather's historical wrongdoing and sincerely apologize as his descendant," she said.

Musician Jeon Beom-seon publicly disclosed that he is a fifth-generation descendant of Lee In-jik — a novelist who served as an interpreter for Lee Wan-yong, the pro-Japanese collaborator synonymous with the sale of Korea's sovereignty.

Jeon studied history at Dartmouth College and at the University of Oxford and championed independence movement figures during his time abroad. He said he was deeply shocked the day his mother told him about his family background.

"I was enormously shocked when my mother told me one day that I was a descendant of a pro-Japanese collaborator," Jeon said. "People generally say that descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators benefited from that legacy, but our family was one that was abandoned — Lee In-jik remarried a Japanese woman and left us behind."


yeonjoo7@heraldcorp.com