The Girl from Nowhere

It seemed like she was here for just a moment and then she was gone.

Kim Sae-Ron was a popular South Korean actress who starred in over 20 TV shows and movies.

I had never heard of her until a few weeks ago when I stepped into what I call “The Netflix Trap.”

That’s where I sit down for what I plan to be a relaxing evening of television as I scroll through the movies and programs available on the streaming service.

And I scroll, and I scroll, and I scroll, struggling to make a decision.

This process can go on for quite a while and, more often than not, I’ll jump over to Amazon Prime and go through the whole charade all over again.

What makes me particularly batty with both these platforms is that they warn you that certain films and TV shows will be leaving soon.

I suppose I should appreciate the heads-up, but I often feel pressured to watch a movie that doesn’t particularly interest me.

And I’ve sat through more than a few dogs in the misplaced fear that I might be missing something.

On the plus side, the time limit finally got me to watch Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, which I had put off because I wasn’t anxious to spend three hours of my life with a bunch of money-grubbing pigs.

So, I finally did watch it, and I have to say that it was a fabulous film—about a bunch of money-grubbing pigs.

Last week, Netflix slapped the warning label on 2010 Korean action movie called The Man from Nowhere, the story of a mysterious pawnshop keeper who takes on gangsters to protect a little girl who lives in his building.

It turns out our hero is a former superspy badass who slices and dices his way through the misbegotten mob of drug dealers and organ traffickers to save the innocent child.

The Man from Nowhere reminded me of the 1984 shoot-em-up The Professional with Jean Reno and a 12-year-old Natalie Portman, but it was still a good guilty pleasure.

Kim Sae-Ron portrayed the little girl, and she was adorable, with this lovely face and Minnie Mouse voice. I can why she got the part.

The film was the highest-grossing film in South Korea the year that it came out.

Her first acting role was in the 2009 film A Brand New Life, directed by the French-Korean filmmaker Ounie Lecomte and loosely based on her life.

Kim played the main character, a nine-year-old girl named Jin-hee, who is abandoned by her father at an orphanage after he remarries and is later adopted by a French couple.

She attended the Cannes Film Festival when the film was shown there in a special screening, becoming the youngest actress to be invited to the festival.

'When will this ever end?'

Kim won several awards for her first two roles, including Best New Actress at the Korean Film Awards and Buil Film Awards, along with a Baeksang Arts Award nomination for Best New Actress.

She went on to build a reputation as one of South Korea's most promising young actresses.

The very next day after I saw The Man from Nowhere, I decided to read up about the movie and IMDB.

And that’s when I found out that Kim Sae-Ron was dead.

I stared in my computer in disbelief. I didn’t know of her existence until 12 hours earlier and now her short life had come to an end.

The police said she had been found dead in her home in Seoul. She was just 24 years old, and the cops said had committed suicide.

Kim had pulled back from acting following negative press coverage and online hate after a drink-driving conviction in 2022, according to the BBC.

She'd hit a transformer box and a guard rail while driving under the influence. The transformer broke down, and electricity was interrupted for about three hours at 57 places including nearby shops.

Kim stepped down her role in the drama Trolley and her part in Bloodhounds was edited out of the show following her arrest.

New reports said that all the money that Kim had accumulated during her career had been used to cover the costs incurred due to the accident and settlement expenses, and that she had taken a part-time job.

Kim’s father said his daughter was haunted by the relentless media coverage of her arrest.

In the roughly 1,000 days between her drunken-driving crash in May 2022 and her death, South Korean mainstream news organizations published around 2,000 stories on Kim, many of which were sensational and negative.

And she was hardly the only young South Korean celebrity to commit suicide.

“When will this ever end?” columnist Yang Sung-hee wrote on Feb. 21. “How many more lives must be lost before this tragic cycle is broken? Another young actress, relentlessly hounded by internet trolls and devoured by the tabloid media, has taken her own life.”

While the entertainment industry emphasizes a clean image and social responsibility, in reality, Yang said, “baseless allegations often spiral into unchecked witch hunts, where accusations are taken as fact and celebrities become targets of excessive public outrage.”

I looked up Trolley and Bloodhound on Netflix and I tempted to watch them to get a better appreciation of Kim’s career.

But part of me would rather skip those programs and just remember that beautiful little girl with the Minnie Mouse voice.