{"id":336989,"date":"2025-12-10T14:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T14:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/336989\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T14:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T14:47:11","slug":"celebrity-scandals-renew-debate-on-cancel-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/336989\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrity scandals renew debate on ‘cancel culture’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yuna Ku,BBC Koreanand<\/p>\n

Koh Ewe<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Park Na-rae, one of the country’s most successful female comedians, has now left her popular variety shows amid allegations of workplace bullying<\/p>\n

In a matter of days, three big names in South Korea’s entertainment industry have made headlines in separate scandals that could derail their careers.<\/p>\n

The allegations that have embroiled comedians Park Na-rae and Cho Sae-ho, as well as veteran actor Cho Jin-woong, are all different – ranging from workplace abuse to previous teenage detention to associations with a gang member.<\/p>\n

But the results have been the same: departures from the television screens where they had worked their way up to become household names.<\/p>\n

The scandals have also raised questions about the standards to which South Korea’s public figures are held – especially in the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n

What are the scandals about?<\/p>\n

Park Na-rae, one of the country’s most successful female comedians, made headlines last week when two of her former managers lodged criminal complaints claiming she had verbally abused and physically assaulted them.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old had also made them do her personal chores, they alleged.<\/p>\n

Park has denied these allegations and sued the former managers for blackmail, her agency said over the weekend.<\/p>\n

She is separately being accused of receiving IV drips illegally at home, which violates the local medical law, local media reported – prompting a police investigation.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Park Na-rae announced on social media that she had talked things through with her accusers, but would halt all broadcasting activities until things were “clearly resolved”.<\/p>\n

“As a comedian whose job is to bring laughter and joy, I cannot continue to be a burden to my programs and colleagues,” she wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Cho Sae-ho came under fire for his alleged links to a local gang member<\/p>\n

Another comedian who has come under scrutiny over the past week is Cho Sae-ho.<\/p>\n

Rumours started swirling last week that the 43-year-old was friends with a prominent local gang member and had received money to promote the latter’s business.<\/p>\n

Backlash came swiftly, as social media users demanded that Cho Sae-ho be removed from the popular variety shows he hosted, You Quiz on the Block and Two Days and One Night.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Cho Sae-ho’s agency announced that he would leave the shows – though it denied his links to the gang’s business activities.<\/p>\n

In a social media statement, Cho Sae-ho said he “should have been more careful” with the people he met at events.<\/p>\n

He added that he had decided to step down from the shows because he did not want to “burden” the programmes and their production teams.<\/p>\n

The downfall that has generated the most debate comes from veteran actor Cho Jin-woong, who said over the weekend that he would quit acting.<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Cho Jin-woong announced his retirement from acting amid allegations of robbery and sexual assault as a teen<\/p>\n

The abrupt announcement came after a viral news report that said Cho Jin-woong, as a teenager in the 1990s, had been sent to a juvenile detention centre on allegations of robbery and sexual assault. As an adult, he also assaulted a person in his theatre troupe and had his driving licence suspended for drink driving, the report said.<\/p>\n

The 49-year-old’s agency said that Cho Jin-woong had confirmed wrongdoing in his youth, but denied sexually assaulting anyone.<\/p>\n

Broadcasters have scrambled to erase Cho Jin-woong from their platforms. A documentary series he narrated has now had the narration re-recorded, while the fate of Second Signal, the sequel to his hit TV series, remains unclear.<\/p>\n

A debate over cancel culture<\/p>\n

The allegations Cho Jin-woong faces have stirred heated debate about how much public figures should be forgiven for past mistakes.<\/p>\n

“Why does Cho Jin-woong need to retire?” reads one social media comment. “Why should a flawed past remain the standard by which a person is judged decades later?”<\/p>\n

Others, however, have argued that seeing him on screen could retraumatise his past victims.<\/p>\n

“There are people who defend [Cho Jin-woong] by saying everyone makes mistakes when they’re young, but not everyone commits this level of crime,” wrote one social media user.<\/p>\n

More broadly, the recent string of celebrity scandals has raised bigger questions about the standards to which South Koreans hold their celebrities. It’s a system that has sent rising stars into hiatus for being school bullies<\/a>, and squeezed apologies out of them for simply dating other celebrities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Culture critic Kim Sung-soo tells the BBC that in South Korea, audiences want to correct behaviour that they deem unacceptable – which, in the case of celebrities, often means disappearing from the screens.<\/p>\n

“Celebrities are easy targets because their careers depend on reputation and popularity – things that are granted by the public,” culture critic Kim Sung-soo tells the BBC.<\/p>\n

Now, just as Park, Cho Sae-ho and Cho Jin-woong promised to “reflect deeply” on their actions, it appears some among their audiences are also reflecting on how celebrities are treated.<\/p>\n

“It’s absurd that people mistake this recurring pattern of targeting celebrities online – digging for flaws and pushing them out – as a moral issue,” one person wrote on X.<\/p>\n

“I’m tired of this cancel-culture cycle, and I think it’s time for our society to seriously rethink online communities.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yuna Ku,BBC Koreanand Koh Ewe Getty Images Park Na-rae, one of the country’s most successful female comedians, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-336989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}