Kim Sae-ron was found dead at her home on the 16th February. The Seongdong Police Station in Seoul revealed that at around 4:54pm on that day, Kim Sae-ron was found in a state of cardiac arrest at a multi-family house in Seongsu-dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul.
The deceased, who made her showbiz debut in 2001 as a child model for the magazine Anhwan, began her acting career in earnest with the 2009 film Traveller, in which she won a 1,000-fold competition to be cast and became the youngest Korean actor to step on the red carpet at the ‘Cannes Film Festival’. She then played the role of Somi in the film ‘Ajosi’ starring actor Won Bin, which was well received and gained her public recognition.
Since then, she has appeared in the dramas ‘Can You Hear My Heart?’ (2011), What's Your Mother Said (2012) and The Queen's Classroom (2013), where her acting skills were recognised, but her acting career came to a crisis when she was involved in a drunk driving accident in May 2022. At the time, she was driving in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, with a blood alcohol level of more than 0.2% and crashed into a transformer and a row of trees.
The accident resulted in the editing of a large part of the Netflix series Bloodhound that she had filmed, and she was also dropped from the SBS drama Wheel. At the same time, She parted ways with her agency Gold Medalist and was owed hundreds of millions of won (tens of millions of yen) in penalties. The deceased originally lived in a 143-square-metre flat dedicated to a residential and commercial complex in Seoul's Seongdong-gu (actual transaction: 2.2 billion won), but it was found that she had to leave this house because it was in the name of her agency.
Kim Sae-ron had used the income she had earned up to that point to fund her parents' business and her family's living expenses, and had very little property. In an interview in 2023, Min Ki-ho, a lawyer who was the deceased's legal representative, stated that the situation was "a situation where she took on a lot of debts because the penalty itself was substantial" and that "all of her income up to that point was used to fund her parents" business and for the living expenses of her family. She has been placed in a difficult economic situation’.
Since then, Kim Sae Ron has struggled alone, working part-time at a café and other jobs to prepare for living expenses and penalty payments. One acquaintance said, "Since that incident [drunk driving traffic accident], Kim Sae Rong changed her name to Kim Aim" and added, "People didn't know because she wore glasses and had a different name, but when her photo was taken and the fact that she was Kim Sae Rong became known, she was fired. I had to work part-time for a living, so I got a job at a café, but I was quite distressed because such things happened again and again."
However, despite this situation, Kim Sae-Rong was still looking for a way to return to work. When she tried to return in the play Dongchimi, but was unable to win over public outcry and had to drop out, she immediately dreamt of returning to the screen in the film Guitar Man. She took on the role of a female keyboard player in the film and was said to be very motivated, even practising on the keyboard. However, she passed away just before the film's release.
Kim Sae-ron's mortuary was prepared at the funeral home of Seoul Asan Hospital in Songpa-gu, Seoul. The coffin will be unveiled at 6.20am on the 19th.
■Main counselling services for problems introduced on the website of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare to prevent suicide.
Mental health consultation united dial: 0570-064-556
Yorosoi Hotline: 0120-279-338; from Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures: 0120-279-226
Inochi no Denwa: 0570-783-556
2025/02/17 20:27 KST
Copyrights(C) Herald wowkorea.jp 111
