The apparent suicide of “Parasite” actor and drug suspect Lee Sun-kyun Wednesday came amid a strict crackdown on drugs in South Korea, where offenses are punishable by prison terms of anywhere from six months to 14 years for dealers and repeat offenders.
Lee, 48, had left behind a suicide note before being found unconscious in a car filled with carbon monoxide next to a Seoul park, police said.
His death came two months after he was reportedly dropped from a film in connection with his alleged drug use and days after he endured a 19-hour interrogation about it — his third questioning in as many months, officials said.
Lee, best known for his role in the 2019 Oscar-winning thriller, had told cops that a bar hostess tricked him into doing drugs, including cannabis, and then tried to blackmail him, the Yonhap news agency reported.
President Yoon Suk Yeol promised this spring that his government would “join all forces to win the war on drugs,” following the drug arrest of another A-list actor, Yoo Ah-in, and after a crime ring blackmailed the parents of teenagers who were given drinks laced with methamphetamine, The Korea Times reported.
A new narcotics investigation department at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office was launched with a staff of 840 people, as punishments against users and smugglers alike were bolstered.
“Harsh investigations are necessary to punish drug criminals,” Yoon said. “Efforts should also be given to rehabilitation treatment to help them return to society at the earliest possible date,” he added, highlighting increased rehab training and staffing.
Despite — or perhaps because of — the crackdown, drug arrests were at a record high in the democratic republic of 52 million this year.
More than 17,150 were arrested for possessing, manufacturing or distributing drugs in the first 11 months of the year, the National Police Agency said last week, according to Korea Joongang Daily.
That figure marked a 39% increase from 2022, which had previously been a record-setting year for drug arrests.
More than one thousand of those suspects were teenagers, marking a three-fold increase from previous years, the report said.
Cops seized 22 kilos of meth and nearly 24,000 opium poppies in addition to four kilos of ketamine this year. The vast majority of drug use reportedly occurred at nightclubs, karaoke parlors and other entertainment facilities, the police agency claimed.
It was unclear if the crackdown was having any effect on diminishing drug use or availability. An anonymous NPA official told the outlet that the price of illicit substances were “estimated to be continuously trending downward because of increased supply.”
South Korea suffers from the highest suicide rate among developed countries, and the aggressive news coverage of Lee’s alleged drug use might have contributed to that grim statistic, ABC News reported.
“Lee faced some allegations but they haven’t been formally verified. But the media has been assertively reporting about Lee’s private life … and I think that’s something wrong,” Kang Youn-gon, a media communication professor at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University, told the outlet.
When Lee was first interrogated in October, he publicly apologized for “causing immense disappointment” and said he was “sorry for my family, who are enduring extreme pain at this moment.”
The Screen Actors Guild award-winning actor left behind a wife and two children.
Although South Korea’s drug laws are known to be some of the world’s toughest, they are more forgiving than those of its totalitarian neighbor to the north, which is known to execute drug suspects.
In addition to North Korea — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, China and Vietnam also dole out capital punishment for drug offenses, according to Harm Reduction International.
Under a 1994 law, drug dealers can be also executed in the US, a never-before used option that Donald Trump has pledged to implement if elected to a second non-consecutive term, even as drug legalization and decriminalization flourishes in blue states across the country.
With Post wires