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Friday, October 3, 2008

Death in the Age of Cyberspace

posted by on October 3 at 10:41 AM

choijinsil6.jpg

One of South Korea’s most famous actresses was found dead in her home on Thursday in what the police called a suicide. They linked her death to malicious online rumors, a growing social problem in South Korea, which has one of the world’s most active online communities and one of its highest suicide rates.

The body of the actress, Choi Jin-sil, 39, was found in the bathroom of her apartment with a rope made out of bandages around her neck, Yang Jae-ho, a senior police investigator, said at a news conference.

Already struggling with a messy divorce, she had been deeply troubled by online accusations that she had driven another actor to gas himself in his car a month earlier, Yang said. The actor, Ahn Jae-hwan, was struggling with debt, and the rumors said she had pressed him relentlessly to repay money she had lent. She complained to the police about the rumors, which she called baseless, and they were investigating when she died.


Happenings that were once only found in the science fiction novels of William Gibson are now happenings we find in daily newspapers. At some point, between 2002 and 2004, we met the approaching mirror of fantasy and entered the other side, entered reality.


RSS icon Comments

1

hey, not only do i own that same white stool, but mine's broken and leans forward too! cool!

Posted by thickturd | October 3, 2008 11:10 AM
2

just another excuse for mudede to post a photo that he can wank off to.

Posted by onion | October 3, 2008 11:15 AM
3

koreans don't have any balls.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | October 3, 2008 11:16 AM
4

this post doesn't make any sense. for starters, you can't see her boobies.

Posted by brandon | October 3, 2008 11:21 AM
5

This is interesting to me because suicide rates in Germany dropped after reunification. There was a brief surge in the suicide rate immediately following reuinification amongst East Germans that was attributed to the sudden demise of the welfare state and widespread unemployment and the resultant poverty, but then rates dropped for both sides.

Korea continues to be a country divided and it makes one wonder if that leaves a mark on the psyche of the citizens of those two halves. Of course, the rate of suicide for North Korea is a closely guared secret so we may never know.

Another interesting result of German reuinification is that murder, which was almost unknown in the East has become as common as in the Western sector.

Posted by inkweary | October 3, 2008 11:41 AM
6

Personally, I think we are getting closer to the novels of Richard Morgan.

Posted by crazycatguy | October 3, 2008 2:13 PM
7

Suicide sounds like Korea's national sport.

Posted by Sirkowski | October 3, 2008 3:28 PM

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