A Seoul TV station reported the details of the purported note but withheld the executives' names. Within hours, talent manager Yoo Jang-ho claimed he possessed a suicide note from Jang but did not reveal its contents. Soon afterward, actress Choi Jin-sil committed suicide amid rampant speculation on the Internet that she was the one to whom Ahn owed large sums of money. TV actor Ahn Jae-hwan killed himself in September after reportedly struggling with mounting debts. Jang's suicide is the latest of several involving South Korean celebrities in recent months.
"Throughout our recent history, including the past military regimes, there has been the idea that powerful authorities consider celebrities as their possessions," said Lee Myoung-jin, a sociology professor at Korea University in Seoul. And although it is still unclear who might have forced Jang into sexual relations, commentators are calling into question the secret relationship between power and celebrity in South Korea. The story has since featured more plot twists than an episode of "Boys Over Flowers," which featured Jang as a social-climbing high school bully: One of her managers attempted suicide, and police are seeking to extradite a former manager from Japan.Īs police continue their investigation, newspaper and TV reports have brought near-daily speculation on the identities of the TV executives. The plot soon thickened with the discovery of a purported suicide note that claims she had been repeatedly forced to have sex with entertainment executives, whose names haven't been revealed. The drama began when Jang Ja-yeon, 27, star of a popular TV soap, was found hanged inside her suburban Seoul apartment in early March. Reporting from Seoul - In this nation obsessed with its soap operas, a real-life spectacle involving sex, a starlet's suicide and the country's most powerful entertainment executives has South Koreans riveted.
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