SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean actor Lee Solar-kyun, famed for his position in smash-hit film “Parasite,” however not too long ago hit by drug allegations, died Wednesday in an obvious suicide.

In a rustic the place high-profile suicides have made world headlines lately, the 48-year-old actor’s demise prompted fast nationwide media consideration.

South Korea’s Yonhap Information Company reported that Mr. Lee was discovered lifeless by police in his automobile at a mountainside park in Seoul. A charcoal heating briquette – a typical instrument for Korean suicides, by way of carbon monoxide poisoning – was discovered within the car.

The event got here within the wake of native information reviews that Mr. Lee had been grilled by police through the Christmas weekend over alleged drug use. He reportedly requested a lie detector through the questioning. His drug assessments proved adverse.

Per reviews, Mr. Lee mentioned he had been tricked into taking medication by a bar hostess in Seoul’s Gangnam space, then blackmailed.

Mr. Lee gained performing fame with a breakthrough position within the 2007 South Korean tv drama sequence “Behind the White Tower.” He later catapulted to world fame along with his position as the rich household patriarch within the 2019 black comedy “Parasite.”

The South Korean movie’s tackle middle-class angst captured the world’s pre-COVID zeitgeist. In 2020, it grew to become the primary foreign-language movie to win the best-picture Oscar in Hollywood.

The peculiarities of Mr. Lee’s case elevate questions for household, associates and the authorities. The miserable frequency of suicides in South Korea – extensively considered as one of many world’s most profitable nations – is a supply of deep hand-wringing for the nation’s wider society.

South Korean self killings

South Korea suffers the best per capita suicide fee within the Group for Financial Co-operation and Growth (OECD), a world discussion board of 37 democracies with market-based economies all over the world.

The South Korean fee of 24.1 per 100,000 individuals is greater than double the OECD common of 9.7 per 100,000. Whereas the aged are most in danger, suicides of high-profile people are identified to make headlines, and Korea observers see a number of elements at play.

Over the previous half-century, South Korea has achieved middle-class prosperity and full democracy. Nationwide behaviors, aspirations and values are largely in sync with these of the West.

However with a conventional background in communal, fairly than individualistic, traditions, South Korean social tradition manifests in intense peer pressures. Some analysts say suicide is seen as an escape from disgrace or as a solution to protest allegations of unhealthy habits.

Significantly in danger are entertainers, who’re anticipated to be squeaky clear. Mortalities amongst this phase embrace vastly standard actress Choi Jin-sil who died by suicide in 2008, and Kim Jong-hyun, a vocalist of the South Korean boy band Shinhee, who died by suicide in 2017.

Beneath the pores and skin

Outdoors observers typically contend that conformity is an in-built a part of South Korean society.

“The time period in Korean for the general public gaze is, ‘in different individuals’s eyes,’” mentioned David Tizzard, who teaches Korean Research at Seoul Girls’s College. “Once you do the recycling, you’re being watched, so that you do it correctly; once you exit, you costume up, as you’re being seen.”

When Mr. Tizzard’s overseas college students complain that they’re being stared at in public, he advises them that they aren’t alone: “That’s the way in which it’s right here.”

Celebrities are held to particularly excessive requirements.  

Take BTS. One cause for the boy band’s world success is their vanilla picture as well-behaved lads – very totally different from the “intercourse, medication and rock and roll” way of life pursued by many Western contemporaries.

“Superstar expectations in Korea are very totally different than in Western international locations,” mentioned Michael Breen, Seoul-based writer of “The New Koreans.”

“We nearly admire individuals who behave badly and whose lives are a large number after which there’s a redemption story,” mentioned Mr. Breen. “However in Korea, there isn’t a admiration for somebody who behaves badly.”

Attitudes towards medication are unforgiving. In Western well being programs habit is extensively seen as a well being or psychological well being situation, and handled as such. In Korea, it’s criminalized.

That generates excessive pressures in a judiciary the place authorities have appreciable leeway in garnering confessions. In a nation the place leisure drug abuse is taken into account legal, authorities are empowered to realize convictions.

Prosecution reform is a long-time political sizzling potato in South Korea, with many believing the system favors investigators over defendants.

Mr. Lee had reportedly spent 19 hours beneath police questioning through the Christmas weekend.

Within the face of excessive conviction charges, “many commit suicide as soon as they arrive to the eye of the justice system,” mentioned Mr. Breen.

The mix of public shaming and the facility of the prosecution are elements which have led to some high-profile suicides.

These embrace the 2009 suicide of Roh Moo-hyun, a former president whose household confronted a corruption probe, and the 2020 suicide of Park Gained-soon, a mayor of Seoul who confronted allegations of sexual harassment.