K-actress Ha Young Runs into Scandal Upon Premiere of First Big Leading Lady Role in Netflix Rom-com My Sticky Love with Jung Hae In
Okay, whether this scandal is legit or not it is totally one that she unfortunately brought upon herself by talking about it. K-actress Ha Young saw her leading lady role Netflix K-drama Our Sticky Love with Jung Hae In premiere last Friday and has gotten strong positive reviews right off the bat. She also had a memorable guest starring role in another recent hit Netflix drama Teach You a Lesson so she was basically hitting a career high. Except over the weekend she did an interview to promote the drama where she mentioned that she came from a family with four generations of doctors – her great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and her sister. She mentioned her great-grandfather was the first to open a Western medicine clinic in Hanyang (old capital). Netizens then looked up that her last name is Ahn and indeed her great-grandfather was Dr. Ahn Sang Ho who did pioneer modern medicine during that era, studied medicine in Japan, opened a hospital, and even treated then Emperor Gojong. But the scandal is that her great-grandfather is being called a pro-Japanese collaborator by being listed as a member of a friendship association during the colonial era where Koreans and Japanese worked together. Her agency first issued a statement denying it, then next day issued another statement apologizing and admitting it, that her great-grandfather was indeed listed as a member of that association considered problematic. Ha Young is being castigated for her family being successful and wealthy from ill gotten gains from being pro-Japanese collaborators during the colonial era and for boasting about her family’s background that came from that type of beginning. Netflix has cancelled her next scheduled interview to promote Our Sticky Love and it’s unclear how big this scandal will go, i.e. will she legit leave the industry or have to prostrate herself to apologize and beg forgiveness for her family’s past conduct.
I don’t care about her family background, but she overacted a lot in the first few episodes. Her performance is the main weakness in an otherwise interesting plot with a strong cast, including JHI as the male lead.
There’s nothing alleged about it. He was member of an association whose purpose was to assimilate Koreans into Japan, alongside famous collaborators like Yi Wanyong (whom he saved when an assassination almost took him out). There are literal interviews with the guy in which he talks about not owning a single piece of traditional Korean clothing and not associating with Koreans. He married a Japanese woman and boosted about raising his children in a completely Japanese environment, with no knowledge of the Korean language. There’s also some old case about him forcibly acquiring land.
Ha Young (who, by the way, isn’t even using her surname for some reason) goes and talks about her great-grandpa being Emperor Gojong’s doctor, but doesn’t mention that he was suspected of poisoning him to death, a fact even mentioned in Japanese records and acknowledged as fact not only by Gojong’s daughter, but also by Gojong’s daughter-in-law, a Japanese imperial princess.
And to make matters worse, HY’s agency doubles down by shifting the topic to her GRANDFATHER dedicating his life to curing leprosy. But where did he do this? On Sorokdo, (in)famous for unethical medical experiments, forced sterilizations and systematic human rights abuses. And finally, to top it all, this “service” got him an exemption from actual military service in the Korean war.
A lot of this sounds like hearsay. Do you have any proof that the grandfather took part in unethical experiments?
People like you are basically advocating for bills of attainder or damnatio memoriae. Horrific, bloody mentality
There was that one famous actor Kang Dong won who also had familial ties as well and seemed to somehow ride it out. She will simply need to apologize I suppose otherwise what more can she do? The past is not something one can simply change. It happened and it is for the future generations to reflect and do better for the future and I am not negating the wrong her ancestors committed. It just seems like a sticky situation to come out of. That drama Sticky Love was such an odd watch. The writing for the story was so illogical at times and seemed oddly rushed. This scandal just makes things so much more awkward. The male lead was the carrying force for me and I hope he gets a better drama than this cause he can offer so much more.
Actors get away with things a lot easier than actresses. Hopefully she gets to ride it out too.
I’m surprised at her agency fumbling this. They really shouldn’t have denied it at first only to have to backtrack. I don’t think Ha-young had her personal apology up yet either. Don’t think she needs to apologize for having such ancestors (not like she can go back in time and change who her family was), but boasting ignorantly about them must have drag out painful emotions.
There were over 4300 officially recorded collaborators who have since spawned probably 100,000+ descendants today. There were likely more who weren’t recorded like Ha-young’s great grandfather, but were known to be supporting Japanese colonialism.. And I’ll bet many of them have not looked into their family history much, especially if it’s an ancestor they’ve never met. Probably get one or two factoids passed down.
Sticky Love is okay and I really enjoy Ha-young’s comedic timing, so I hope she can overcome this.
Yes,’boasting ignorantly about them’ will do her no favours even though she might well have been ignorant about them. I guess she has heard plenty of revisionist history version from her relatives, boasting about Grandad to her, leaving out the bad bits. I guess she won’t be going on a Korean equivalent of Who Do You Think You Are tv series – Famous people trace back their ancestry, any time soon or ever.
is this about acting or about digging the historical past ….great grandfather
how crual are this people
She can’t help having ancestors who were basically Korea’s version of Vichy France traitors
but the whole thing only got found out because she boasted about her family’s wealth and doctor great-grandpa on the record, all of this could have been avoided if she had even a little bit of common sense or tact to not publicise her collaborator ancestor less than a week before Korea’s liberation day. She wouldn’t be facing this level of blame if she hadn’t been bragging about him and then, when netizens dug out evidence of the collaborator, tried to deny he was a collaborator.
P.S. and collaborator families’ wealth is a sensitive topic in Korea because those people never had to give back any of their ill-gotten gains, which even the Nazis had to do after WWII.
On top of that, the families of actual Korean independence activists were often impoverished because the colonial authorities and pro-Japanese collaborators deliberately set out to make life and even earning a living difficult for them, even after independence. So seeing a wealthy collaborator descendant praising her ancestor on tv and treating that as evidence of her good image, probably pissed off a lot of people in Korea and I can see why.
Aside from the public/netizen/sponsors, etc., reaction, imagine the conversations she has had/is having with the family. Doubt that’ll be resolved, return to happy families anytime soon.