Entertainment News

Choi Bool-am, Korea's TV 'father of the nation', dies at 87

South Korean actor Choi Bool-am, known as the nation's father figure from decades of paternal roles on television, died on Thursday night at a hospital in western Seoul, his family said. He was 87. Yonhap and The Korea Herald both carried the news on Friday.

Choi made his stage debut in Hamlet in 1959 and moved to television in 1967. He became a household name as detective Park in MBC's Chief Inspector (1971–1989), and as the patriarch in Country Diaries (1980–2002), which Yonhap calls one of South Korea's longest-running series. He also served as a lawmaker from 1992 to 1996. The government posthumously awarded him the Geumgwan Order of Cultural Merit, the highest class.

“In one word, he was the father of the nation.” — producer Pyo Jae-soon, via Yonhap

How each outlet framed it

• Yonhap — the official reaction: President Lee Jae Myung called him the “father of our era”, the prime minister mourned him, and party leaders from both sides paid tribute. A separate report gathered memories from co-stars who played his sons.
• The Korea Herald — after running Yonhap's report, a longer feature on why viewers loved him: his trench-coated detective became “the country's template for TV detectives”, and his head-thrown-back laugh became a running gag.

Where the details differ: The Korea Herald feature counts 880 episodes of Chief Inspector and 1,088 of Country Diaries, which it calls the longest-running drama in South Korean history. The feature also spells his name Choi Bul-am, while Yonhap and the Herald's news report use Choi Bool-am.