The city of Anyang in Gyeonggi Province has deleted an official blog post that had described Ahn Sang-ho (1872–1927), the great-grandfather of actor Ha Young, as an independence fighter, after controversy grew over his alleged pro-Japanese activities.
Ha Young, 33, whose real name is Ahn Ha-young, is at the center of the dispute.
Anyang said on the 13th that it had made a Naver blog post by a citizen reporter, which had portrayed Ahn Sang-ho as an independence fighter, private. A city official said the pro-Japanese activities of Ahn had not been known at the time of posting, acknowledging that the entry reflected an error in judgment caused by a lack of information, and said the post was taken down to correct it.
The post in question was written in 2020 by the city's citizen reporter team as part of a project titled "In Search of Anyang's Independence Fighters," marking the 75th anniversary of Korea's liberation. It introduced Ahn Sang-ho as one of the independence fighters from Anyang. The city added that research and records on pro-Japanese collaboration were insufficient at the time, and that Ahn's name did not appear in the dictionary of pro-Japanese collaborators compiled by the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities, nor on the government's official list.
The controversy began with a scene from the KBS2 entertainment program "Problem Children in the Rooftop Room," aired on the 7th, in which Ha Young revealed coming from a family of doctors spanning four generations. Presented at first as a harmonious family history, the remark took on an entirely different meaning once it became known that the great-grandfather was Ahn Sang-ho, a physician active during the Japanese colonial period. Posts capturing Ahn's background spread quickly across online communities and message boards, and related posts drew a stream of comments expressing disappointment. As broadcast screenshots and records related to Ahn were shared together, the controversy climbed into portal real-time search rankings within a day.
The dispute grew further when records confirmed that Ahn had served in 1916 as a councilor of the Daijeong Chinmokhoe, a fraternal society formed by figures from the Korean ruling class and those with pro-Japanese leanings, which is known to have cooperated with the direction of Japanese colonial rule under the Government-General of Korea. According to a 2007 paper titled "The Daijeong Chinmokhoe and the Movement for Japan-Korea Harmony," by Jang Shin, a standing research fellow at the Institute for Korean Historical Studies, the Police Bureau of the Government-General of Korea in 1927 defined the group as "an organization for Japan-Korea harmony that endorses the Governor-General's rule and aims at the harmony of the Japanese and Korean peoples." As this record came to light, some argued that a reexamination was needed not only of Ha Young's individual remarks but of the "prestigious doctor family" narrative that had been presented on air.
As criticism mounted, Ha Young issued an apology the previous day through social media, saying she bowed her head to apologize for the great disappointment and pain caused by matters related to her great-grandfather.
