If Cui Zhen is still alive, he will be 53 years old in a few days. The actor who swept South Korea in the 90s and became popular in the first hallyu to Asia contributed many classic works in his career for 20 years.
Fallen Angel (1995)
"The Legend of the Car God" with Li Bingxian, Zheng Yusheng and Li Ying'ai
1997 Hallyu's founding TV series "Star Dream"
And later 2005's "Rose Life"
And her last work in 2008, "The Last Gossip of My Life".
She is affectionate, acting naturally, full of neighborly feelings, known as the first generation of Korean jade girls, is a strong acting faction, but also the queen of advertising.
As early as Lee Young-ae, Kim Hee-sun, Jeon Ji-hyun, Song Hye-joo and other well-known actresses all over Asia, the first batch of Korean actresses who are out of the circle must have Choi's real name.
In 1988, she made her official debut in the historical drama "500 Years of the Joseon Dynasty".
Since then, from 1990 to 1994, Choi Jin-jin has won awards such as Best Newcomer Actress, Popular Star, and Best Acting Award for several consecutive years, including the Korea Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Baeksang Art Awards.
Pure and cheerful, good acting skills, young Cui Zhen, is already a top star. In 1995, at the age of 27, she won the queen of the Korean Film Grand Bell Award for the film "The Secret of Killing His Wife".
Two years later, "Star Dream" directly pushed her to the international stage. That year, because it was too popular, Cui's real income soared, and he also received a presidential award (at that time, he was already worth tens of millions of yuan) for paying more taxes.
Cui Zhen's acting achievements in the first ten years after his debut can be described as flawless. But her private life hides a crisis.
Cui Zhen's short life of 39 years old is full of twists and turns and pain. At her peak, she flashed her marriage and retired from the circle, and then appeared because she was openly abused by her husband, and she was pushed down the stairs eight months pregnant, and she was bruised.
After her comeback from divorce, she lived alone with a son and a daughter, but when she returned to the second spring of her career, she was attacked by internet rumors, and finally became overwhelmed and committed suicide in the bathroom in 2008.
Her death swept through the Korean showbiz circle like a 'contagious disease'. Brothers, ex-husbands, and later more stars, all chose to end their lives in a similar way...
On December 24, 1968, Cui Zhenzhen was born. Her family was very modest, and her father ran away from home when she was a minor, leaving her mother and siblings to rely on each other. Cui Zhenzhen and his younger brother Cui Zhenyong, who later also became an actor, had a close relationship, and the sisters and brothers were often photographed in the same frame in the early days.
The Choi siblings became stars in the Korean show business in the early 1990s, and Choi became a big hit year by year. In addition to the support of her brother, her agent at the time, Pei Bingshu, who had a wide network of contacts, also contributed to it.
However, in 1994, the agent was brutally murdered by Cui Zhenzhen's personal driver, causing an uproar, and Cui Zhenzhen was also involved in the storm, and she was summoned by the police as an eyewitness at the time. At that time, the network was not developed, and after the killer driver was sentenced to 25 years in prison, the incident gradually subsided.
After the agent who pulled her to protect her was unfortunately killed, Cui Zhenzhen also experienced many things. The more red she is, the more things she encounters. First in a car accident in 1995, then followed by crazy fans, he was kidnapped twice.
After 1997's "Star Dream", Cui Zhenzhen was stopped for more than a year because he was frequently tracked and unsettled. At this time, she had reached the age of establishment, and in the atmosphere of the showbiz at that time, she was not the most advantageous.
After the tragic death of her agent and the bump in her career, in 2000, 32-year-old Cui Zhenzhen announced that she was married to Zhao Chengmin, a 5-year-old baseball player who was younger than her. The two met in 1998 on the scene of the recording of a variety show and secretly interacted for two years.
The two held a grand wedding, and the guests present were the top of the Korean showbiz industry. In 2001 and 2003, Cui gave birth to a son and a daughter and lived a semi-reclusive life.
When people thought she had finally found her happiness, in 2004, the news of the divorce came, and a photo of Cui's real domestic violence was also made public. The marriage full of violence pushes Cui Zhen to the limit step by step.
It turned out that the year after giving birth to his eldest son, Zhao Chengmin's baseball career became very bad, his income plummeted, and he lived on his wife. However, the nest bag wasted no money and no ability, and he had a big temper, and began to cheat on domestic violence, and punched and kicked Cui Zhen without a word.
Cui Zhen initially endured for the sake of the child, but when she was pregnant with her second child, in January before giving birth, Zhao Chengmin repeated the same trick, beat her fiercely and pushed his wife down the stairs, and Cui Zhen, who was beaten to the nose and blue face, made up his mind to divorce, broke the boat, and disclosed his own scar photos.
Zhao Chengmin broke the jar and broke it, publicly 'complained' to the media, and even bit Cui Zhenzhen as the responsible party, saying that she also beat herself.
Later, in divorce proceedings and custody lawsuits, Zhao Chengmin demanded that Cui Zhen pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. In order to get back the full custody of the two children as soon as possible, Cui Zhen did not hesitate to give up zhao Chengmin's hundreds of millions of loans borrowed from her mother and brother.
At the end of 2004, the two divorced, and Cui Zhen took his children and mother back to the big house he bought, and began to prepare for a comeback.
In the five years of not being in the jianghu, Cui Zhen is no longer the young jade girl of that year. She simply made a direct transformation and played a divorced untrimmed aunt in the 2005 TV series "Rose Life".
Cui Zhen, who "dressed up ugly", has experienced many life experiences at this time, and has many similarities with the character's story line, she is back on track and won the Best Acting Award of the Baeksang Art Award.
The next "Bad Woman Good Woman", as well as the 2008 blockbuster "The Last Scandal of My Life", directly let Cui Zhen return to the position of a first-line actor.
But at the same time as she was on fire again, the suicide of a good friend dragged her into hell.
On August 22, 2008, actor Ahn Jae-hwan was found to have committed suicide by burning charcoal in a car. According to reports, he was overwhelmed by the failure of borrowing usurious loans to start a business, and chose to commit suicide. Before committing suicide, he also wrote a suicide note to confess and say goodbye.
Ahn Jae-hwan and his wife, Jeong Sun-hee, have been Choi-jin's best friends for many years, and Jeong Sun-hee is one of her bridesmaids.
After An's accident, Cui Zhen rushed to the lingtang to assist his friend in dealing with her husband's aftermath, and was also photographed falling down in a hurry.
At that time, South Korea's Internet culture was already quite developed, and photos of celebrities, including Choi Jin, going to the shrine to mourn and cry were all over the place. It was also at this time that a rumor began to be retweeted on the Internet forum.
A female employee of a cybersecurity company posted online that she knew the inside story, saying that Choi Zhen had lent money to Ahn Jae-hwan and finally forced his initiator to die, rushing to the Lingtang to help because she was worried that Ahn Jae-hwan's wife would not recognize the account.
The rumor-mongers packaged the posts in a particularly realistic way, pinching the details and timing of the money accurately, and quickly swept the South Korean network.
Cui Zhenzhen did not care at first, but simply responded that the money for twenty years of his debut was handed over to his mother to manage, and the stock fund did not touch it, let alone lend usury.
However, many South Korean netizens were instigated after reading the post, held high the "banner of justice", frantically insulted her, asked her to retreat, and even directly said that she was the murderer who indirectly forced her friends to die. A large number of media even sent special personnel to live reports in front of Cui Zhen's home.
On September 22, 2008, Cui Zhen called the police to ask for an investigation into the source of the rumor, and 6 days later, the woman surnamed Bai was arrested, and Cui Zhen prepared to file a lawsuit.
(Rumor-mongers)
However, in the 20 years since her debut, she has returned to the peak after experiencing great winds and waves in the show business circle, and a strong mother who has worked hard to live with a son and a daughter after divorce has completely collapsed in the scorn of tens of millions of people.
According to Cui Zhen's mother, for more than a month after the rumors began to spread, in addition to guarding the spirit of her friends, Cui Zhen had to wash her face with tears every day and take antidepressant drugs, but also had to get drunk to fall asleep.
She cried to her mother countless times, disappointed in people, and did not understand why everyone hated her so much and what she had done wrong.
Rumors are cool for a while, and rumors run and break their legs. According to reports, after calling the police at the end of September, on the way to prepare for the lawsuit, the rumor-monger and Cui Zhenzhen called to beg for forgiveness, hoping that she would withdraw the lawsuit. Cui Zhen's younger brother, Choi Jin-yong, said that before his sister committed suicide, he told him that he was in pain and terrified to hear the devil-like voice of the rumor-monger.
This call became the last straw that overwhelmed her. In the early morning of October 2, 2008, after saying goodnight to his mother, Cui Zhen pretended to go to the bathroom, locked the door and left a last message to his friend: "The children will please you, I'm sorry." ”
At four o'clock in the morning, Cui Zhen's mother slammed open the anti-lock door and found her daughter, who was already panting.
Choi's death not only shook South Korea, but news reports spread around the world. Just a few days after her death, Ahn Jae-hwan's wife, Jeong Sun-hee, who was helped to the spiritual hall, made it clear that Choi was really wronged, absolutely impossible.
Unfortunately, although the rumors are over, after Cui Zhen's death, the tragedy has not stopped. In August 2009, her ashes were stolen by men with mental problems, and it took the police ten days to retrieve and rebury her.
After the ashes incident, the relatives around her lived in the dark. In March 2010, her brother Choi Jin-yong, overwhelmed by pressure, committed suicide in the same way as hanging himself, at the same age as her sister, at the age of 39.
After the death of Cui's siblings, Cui Chengmin's ex-husband Zhao Chengmin was repeatedly insulted and attacked because of past atrocities, lost his job as a TV commentator, and finally in 2013, under the pressure of public opinion, he also chose to hang himself, and he was also 39 years old when he died.
After he left, Cui Zhen left a son and a daughter to live with his grandmother. Grandma once said in an interview that she wanted to die with her, but she couldn't rest assured that her grandson and granddaughter would have to live with her teeth.
In the past 13 years, my grandmother has moved to Jeju Island with her children, and very occasionally accepts programs to let everyone see how the children are doing.
But an old man with two children is not generally difficult.
In 2017, the 14-year-old granddaughter posted a number of po posts containing suicide content on social media, saying that her grandmother abused her and alarmed the police. The truth of the result is that the child wanted to take the acting path during the rebellious period, but his grandmother did not allow it, and after the contradiction, he made such a scene.
While the little granddaughter rebelled, the eldest grandson was relatively mature. He loves singing and composing music, and last year he came out as an adult with a single and tried his hand at a talent show.
He said in the interview that he missed his mother's hug, but he had gradually forgotten his mother's voice and needed to watch the video to remember, which caused many viewers to cry.
In November 2008, a month after Choi's death, the South Korean government drafted the Choi Se-jin Act, which aims to prohibit the abuse of the Internet to spread rumors anonymously. But ironically, with Choi's departure, the violence in South Korea's online society actually seems to be intensifying over the past 13 years.
After her death, every once in a while there will be new Korean artists, desperate under the pressure of overwhelmed public opinion and depression.
The viciousness of the crowd gathering and naked insults is frightening, but many people still have the opportunity to use the law or even directly fight back.
But like Cui Zhen and later artists, the elaborate and elaborate "news reports" and "exclusive insiders" directly pierced people's last psychological defense line.
In such an environment, people who are drowned by spit, people who are suppressed by public opinion and cannot survive, people who are unable to argue because the attackers hide dirt and dirt, constantly bury pits, and no matter what they say or do, they can be blamed and find loopholes.
Just listening to the story of the person concerned is already chilling.