"National actor" Ahn Sung-ki died on the 5th at age 74. For nearly 70 years, he guarded the film industry and was an actor with "a thousand faces."
On this morning, Ahn Sung-ki died in the intensive care unit at Soonchunhyang University Hospital in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, while receiving treatment with his family by his side.
Ahn Sung-ki, who began acting as a child actor in 1957, played a wide range of roles from a pickpocket boy to a corrupt police officer, a working-class resident of a slum, a mob boss, and a washed-up singer's manager, establishing himself for nearly 70 years as an actor who represented Korea's film industry.
He stepped into the film industry in 1957 when he was cast as a child actor in director Kim Ki-young's "Twilight Train." Through the 1960s, he was active as a child actor in some 70 films, including "The Housemaid" (1960) and "The Scoundrel" (1965).
He returned to the film industry in 1977 after completing military service. Ahn returned as an adult actor through director Kim Ki's "Soldiers and Young Ladies."
Although there was a prejudice at the time that child actors could not succeed as actors, Ahn eased concerns by appearing in several films considered "controversial works" in the Korean film industry.
He appeared in "A Small Ball Shot by a Dwarf" (1981), "Village of Haze" and "People of Kobang Neighborhood" (1982), "Whale Hunting" and "Warm Winter That Year" (1984), "Deep Blue Night" (1985), and "Age of Success" and "Chilsu and Mansu" (1988).
The reasons he was chosen by the era's masters such as Im Kwon-taek, Bae Chang-ho, Lee Jang-ho, and Lee Doo-yong include his wide-ranging ability to inhabit characters and his outstanding acting.
With director Lee Jang-ho's "Good Windy Days" (1980), he won the rookie award at the Grand Bell Awards, and in his next film, director Im Kwon-taek's "Mandala" (1981), he played a monk and won the acting award in the film category at the Baeksang Arts Awards.
After that, in director Bae Chang-ho's "Iron Men" (1982), Ahn played an industrial worker and won best actor at the Grand Bell Awards.
Ahn, who was also adept at comic acting, received praise for his buddy performance with Park Joong-hoon in director Kang Woo-suk's "Two Cops" (1993). The two actors shared the best actor award at the Grand Bell Awards.
In the 1990s, Ahn also often appeared in art films. In director Chung Ji-young's "Partisans in South Korea" (1990), he played a man who was active as a partisan during the Korean War, and in "White Badge" (1992), he played a novelist tormented by memories of serving in the Vietnam War.
At 51, he took on the role of a principled soldier in director Kang Woo-suk's "Silmido" (2003). Silmido became the first Korean film to surpass 10 million viewers. Ahn's line, "Shoot me and go," was quoted on various broadcasts and became a catchphrase.
In 2006, he moved many viewers with "Radio Star," and in 2011, he appeared in director Chung Ji-young's "Unbowed," taking on the role of a professor engaged in a courtroom battle. He went on to play diverse characters in "Revivre" (2014), "The Hunt" (2015), "The Divine Move 2: The Wrathful" (2018), and "Hansan: Rising Dragon" (2022).
Ahn's final work was director Kim Han-min's "Noryang: Deadly Sea" (2023). Ahn appeared in more than 70 films as a child actor and over 100 films as an adult actor.
He never hid his lifelong affection for the film industry. When the Korean film industry faced crisis, he stood at the forefront. Starting in 2000, he served as head of the Screen Quota Guardian Angels, which protected the screen quota system (a policy requiring theaters to show a certain percentage of Korean films), and in 2006, he served as co-chair of the Emergency Committee for the Screen Quota.
In an interview held in 2017 to mark the 60th anniversary of his debut, he said, "As I began my life as an adult actor with the thought that filmmakers and films should receive a bit more respect, I really drove myself and lived with a lot of self-restraint."
He added, "I don't even have a fan club, but if the public is my fan, then it seems right to call me a national actor. (Laughs) I think calling me a national actor is a sign of affection, hoping that I will live up to that title."
Even as he continued treatment for blood cancer from 2019, he did not bend his resolve to act.
After receiving the lifetime achievement award at the 58th Grand Bell Awards in 2022, he said in a video message, "I thought I would live as a film actor for a long, long time without growing old, and I lived forgetting my age, but recently I feel that time and age cannot be stopped," while adding, "I will see you with a new film."