South Korean actor Lee Solar-kyun, identified for enjoying the rich father in Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 movie Parasite, was discovered useless in his automobile on Wednesday morning. Contained in the automobile, parked close to Waryong Park in central Seoul, investigators discovered a charcoal briquette. The briquette, a compressed block of coal that may trigger carbon monoxide poisoning, suggests he died by suicide. He was 48 years outdated.
Lee handed away on the pinnacle of his profession. Along with starring within the Oscar-winning thriller, which earned him a Display Actors Guild Award alongside his fellow forged members, he additionally performed a number one function within the internationally acclaimed sci-fi movie Dr. Mind. His final two movies, Sleep and Undertaking Silence – horror and catastrophe movies, respectively – each made it into the 76th Cannes Movie Competition.
Information shops speculate Lee’s suicide could also be associated to his prison costs. In October, the actor was arrested by the Incheon Metropolitan Police for allegedly utilizing marijuana and different unlawful medication on the house of a hostess in Seoul’s Gangnam district earlier within the 12 months. Lee’s most up-to-date police interrogation, which happened final Saturday, went on for a stunning whole of 19 hours.
In accordance with an article from Korea Times, Lee mentioned that he was “tricked by the hostess into taking the medication and that he didn’t know what he was taking.” He had examined unfavourable for a reagent take a look at and a lab-based drug take a look at from Korea’s Nationwide Forensic Service, and submitted a polygraph lie detector take a look at on the insistence of his lawyer.
The Korea Instances article additionally states that, earlier than his dying, Lee filed a criticism towards the hostess and one different, seemingly unknown individual, “accusing them of blackmail and swindling him out of cash.” When the actor was first taken in for questioning on October 28, he mentioned he was “sorry for my household, who’re enduring excessive ache at this second.”
In an obvious suicide word addressed to his spouse Jeon Hye Jin, which was Up to date by the Korean channel TV Chosun the next day, Lee wrote he “can not do the rest, there is no such thing as a different approach however this.” Relaying a message to his brokers, he added that “the monetary penalties for breaching promoting and film contracts are overwhelming. I’m sorry.”
Though the motivations for Lee’s suicide stay the topic of debate, journalists hyperlink the occasion to the Korean authorities’s ongoing crackdown on leisure drug use. This crackdown started in April, when conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol introduced a “conflict on medication” and created an 840 person-strong division to assist him wage it.
New legal guidelines subjecting producers, distributors, and customers to jail sentences of as much as 10 years in jail have since led to the arrest of over 17,000 folks – a quantity that not solely consists of different South Korean celebrities like actor Yoo Ah-in and Okay-pop singer Kwon Ji-yong, but in addition a bunch of American military officers accused of delivery in synthesized marijuana by the US postal service.
The dimensions and scope of the crackdown is questionable. Included within the authorities’s checklist of unlawful medication aren’t simply cocaine, opiates, and methamphetamines, but in addition tender medication like marijuana. If South Korea as soon as appeared prepared to undertake extra liberal drug insurance policies, President Yoon is stirring the nation within the path of zero-tolerance regimes like Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.