Actor Ha Young faces scrutiny over great-grandfather's alleged pro-Japanese ties, grandfather's work at Sorokdo Hospital

Actor Ha Young, who recently revealed her family's four-generation medical lineage, is facing fresh controversy after it emerged that her grandfather served as a doctor at the National Sorokdo Hospital — a facility with a documented history of human rights abuses against Hansen's disease patients. The development follows earlier allegations that her great-grandfather, Ahn Sang-ho, collaborated with Japanese colonial authorities, though her agency has dismissed those claims as groundless.

Ha Young's agency, Bisters Entertainment, said Monday that her great-grandfather is Ahn Sang-ho and her grandfather is the late Ahn Bu-ho, a former head professor at the Catholic University of Korea College of Medicine, while denying the pro-Japanese collaboration allegations against the great-grandfather as "groundless."

However, the agency added that it was "checking the details" and would issue an official statement at a later date.

Grandfather Ahn Bu-ho is reported to have conducted leprosy research at Sorokdo Hospital from 1949 through 1953 or 1954. During that period, the hospital carried out forced vasectomies, abortions and compulsory labor against Hansen's disease patients.

According to a 2005 survey on the human rights conditions of Hansen's disease patients published by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, Sorokdo Hospital performed vasectomies on 1,191 patients between 1949 and 1958, during the tenure of director Kim Sang-tae (1948–1954).

Patients at the hospital were also subjected to experiments in which needles were inserted into their chests to extract leprosy bacilli from bone marrow, and the bodies of deceased patients were used for anatomical dissection without the consent of their families. The abuses persisted for decades: dissections continued into the 1960s, forced isolation into the 1970s, and forced abortions and sterilizations into the 1980s.

Whether Ahn Bu-ho personally participated in any of these human rights violations has not been confirmed.

Earlier, questions also arose over the alleged pro-Japanese activities of Ha Young's great-grandfather, Ahn Sang-ho.

Ahn graduated from Tokyo Jikei Medical School in Japan in 1902, becoming the first Korean to obtain a Japanese medical license. After returning to Korea in 1904, he served as a royal physician to Emperor Sunjong and as a contracted doctor for the Yi Royal Household Office, and opened Korea's first Western-style medical clinic.

Ahn was featured in the Maeil Sinbo — the official newspaper of the Japanese Government-General of Korea — as a model example of the "naeseon ilche" (Japan-Korea unity) ideology, and is confirmed to have been a member of the pro-Japanese business association Daejong Silop Chinmok-hoe. The group was founded in November 1916 under the chairmanship of Min Yeong-gi, vice president of the Oriental Development Company and a designated pro-Japanese collaborator, and counted among its members prominent collaborators of the era including Lee Wan-yong, Jo Jung-eung, Song Byeong-jun and Lee Yun-yong.

However, no clear evidence has been found to establish that Ahn Sang-ho was himself a pro-Japanese collaborator. His name does not appear in the "Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators" published by the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities.

Meanwhile, Ha Young appeared on the KBS 2TV program Okdapbang-ui Munje-adeul, a TV quiz show, on Friday and revealed that her great-grandfather had opened the first Western-style hospital in Hanyang after completing his studies in Japan and had treated Emperor Gojong. She also disclosed that her family has produced doctors across four generations — her grandfather, father and older sister — drawing wide public attention.