Choi Jun-hee's Instagram blocked amid speculation over extreme diet content

Speculation is growing that the Instagram account of Choi Jun-hee, 23, an influencer and daughter of the late actor Choi Jin-sil, was suspended over diet-related content promoting an extremely thin physique.

Choi announced Thursday on her Threads account that her Instagram page, which had 230,000 followers, had been blocked. "They didn't even tell me why," she wrote.

She shared a link to a newly created account and urged followers to find her there, adding, "I'm so upset I've cried a river."

Choi also posted a screenshot of a notification from Instagram that read: "Your account has been temporarily suspended. This is because your account or activity on your account does not comply with our community guidelines."

Instagram did not disclose a specific reason for the suspension, but some observers have suggested the diet-related content she had been posting may have been the cause.

Instagram's guidelines prohibit content that includes eating disorder-related terminology, imagery closely depicting visibly protruding bones in the arms or legs or sunken cheeks, content describing methods of extreme weight loss, and content that combines eating disorder-related language with restrictive dieting.

Choi gained as much as 96 kilograms due to complications from lupus, a rheumatic disease, before losing 55 kilograms and consistently maintaining a weight in the low 40-kilogram range. At 170 centimeters tall, her frame has raised health concerns.

Choi had frequently posted about her diet and shared related photos on Instagram. In January, she uploaded a photo of a scale showing her weight at 42.5 kilograms and wrote that she wanted to diet more aggressively that year. "I like being extremely thin, so I want to test how far I can go," she wrote. "People who pursue that kind of look will know what I mean — once you succeed at dieting, you just keep wanting to lose more."

More recently, she wrote that she had attempted a corset-tightening project to reduce her rib cage width, which she said felt too wide as she worked toward an extremely thin figure, but gave it up because she felt it was distorting her proportions. In a separate post, she described corset rib-cage reshaping as "common these days."

However, it has not been confirmed whether those posts were the specific reason her account was suspended.

Social media platforms have been tightening restrictions on eating disorder-related content. YouTube, for instance, drew widespread attention after strictly enforcing its guidelines on eating disorders and binge eating, demonetizing some mukbang and diet creator channels and removing hundreds of videos.

paq@heraldcorp.com