{"id":12623,"date":"2020-01-04T09:15:16","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T00:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2020\/jan\/04\/i-have-reported-on-30-korean-celebrity-suicides-the-blame-game-never-changes"},"modified":"2020-01-04T09:15:16","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T00:15:16","slug":"i-have-reported-on-30-korean-celebrity-suicides-the-blame-game-never-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=12623","title":{"rendered":"I have reported on 30 Korean celebrity suicides. The blame game never changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I dread getting calls in the middle of the night in case it is to tell me about another suicide by a K-drama actor or K-pop celebrity<\/p>\n<p>On a hot August day in 2008, I was invited to appear on a TV entertainment programme hosted by actor Ahn Jae-hwan. I noticed Ahn was behaving oddly, walking nervously around the studio whenever he was off camera. He was running a business on the side, and it wasn\u2019t doing well. He was inundated with complaints and had become the target of an online boycott and malicious comments.<\/p>\n<p>I was very worried and mentioned my concern to an actress who was an old friend. \u201cI am worried he might choose to end it all,\u201d I told her. My actor friend said she knew his problems and that his friends and colleagues were trying to help him. Later that month Ahn took his own life.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2020\/jan\/04\/i-have-reported-on-30-korean-celebrity-suicides-the-blame-game-never-changes\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I dread getting calls in the middle of the night in case it is to tell me about another suicide by a K-drama actor or K-pop celebrityOn a hot August day in 2008, I was invited to appear on a TV entertainment programme hosted by actor Ahn Jae-hwan. I no&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":821,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,9,425,1032,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-k-pop","category-music","category-pop-and-rock","category-south-korea"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/821"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12624,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12623\/revisions\/12624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}