Actor Ha Young boasted of a four-generation medical family — then the internet looked up her great-grandfather

Ha Young, the lead actor in the Netflix drama series "Our Sticky Love," has found herself at the center of controversy after internet users identified her great-grandfather as Ahn Sang-ho, a physician with a disputed record of pro-Japanese collaboration.

Ha Young recently appeared in a video published on the YouTube channel "Netflix Korea."

When host Yoo Byung-jae asked whether her family had been doctors for generations, Ha Young confirmed it. "As far as I know, my father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all doctors," she said. "My older sister is also an internal medicine specialist."

She added that, from what she had heard, her great-grandfather was among the first to open a Western medicine clinic in Hanyang — the historical name for Seoul.

Ha Young also mentioned the family's four-generation medical lineage on the KBS 2TV program "Oktapbang-ui Munje-a," a TV quiz show, on Friday, saying her great-grandfather had studied medicine in Japan, opened the first Western-style clinic in Hanyang and treated Emperor Gojong.

Online users began tracing her great-grandfather's identity based on those details, and speculation quickly settled on Ahn Sang-ho (1872–1927), widely regarded as Korea's first modern private physician. Ha Young's agency acknowledged that the identification was correct.

The revelation has drawn criticism, however, because of Ahn's documented pro-Japanese activities during his lifetime.

Records show Ahn served as a council member of the Daejong Chinmok-hoe, a pro-Japanese organization formed in 1916. A 1918 article in the Maeil Sinbo — the official newspaper of the Japanese Government-General of Korea — quoted Ahn, who had married a Japanese woman, as saying: "I am exactly the same as a Japanese person. I no longer wear a single piece of Korean clothing, and I cannot eat anything spicy at all." He described adopting Japanese customs in his daily life and in raising his children. Some historians have noted that Ahn was held up as a model case of "ilseon donghwa" — the Japanese colonial policy of assimilating Koreans into Japanese culture — and that this made him deeply unpopular among Koreans of the time.

Ahn had regular access to the royal court and served as an attending physician there. When Emperor Gojong collapsed in January 1919, Ahn and a Japanese doctor were directly responsible for his care, but they could not save the emperor's life. Ahn subsequently became entangled in rumors that Gojong had been poisoned — rumors that helped ignite the March 1st Independence Movement two months later. The poisoning theory, however, was never established as historical fact.