leepacey: leepacey: leepacey: me at family gatherings #no guys you don’t understand #this
leepacey: leepacey: leepacey: me at family gatherings #no guys you don’t understand #this is super important #mental health in korea is literally awful #you can lose your job because you’re being treated for depression #the fact that this big name star is opening up about it is huuuge #so thank you gong yoo the screenshots here are from near the end of the interview, which i think makes it even worse, because the interviewer listened to everything he’d said and still didn’t treat it very seriously. there are other parts where she seems very smart and intuitive, but then other times he’d say something like “i hate myself to death and feel like i’m an empty shell” and she’d just laugh and move on while i’m just like !!! i was really impressed by how open he is about it though, even the “ugly” symptoms that aren’t really talked about normally — like how he said he used to lock himself in his apartment alone and drink and “bang on the walls” because he didn’t know how else to cope with all the pain he was in, and he even mentions hurting himself and talks about scars and refers to himself as a “masochist” and says a coworker once referred to him as “someone constantly trying to hurt himself.” the fact that he was able to talk about all this so openly, despite the reaction he got, was so impressive and amazing to me it’s really heartbreaking though because he’s obviously never had the support he needs — at one point he mentions that the first person he ever opened up to about all the pain he was in (back in his mid-20s, when he says it was much worse) was a director who was considering hiring him, and he later found out that that director had told people she thought “someone like that” would be “too difficult” to work with, and it caused this rumor/pre-conceived notion about him to spread that affected the way his coworkers treated him. now that he’s famous and has had other work he’s literally known for how charming and nice he is to everyone, but at that point his coworkers all thought he was moody, pretentious, and rude and always avoided him on set because of this, all because he opened up about his severe depression to the wrong person #reblogging this version because honestly like it’s so fucked up #I always forget that I’m very privileged to be able to receive the help that I have gotten and still get as a person with depression #and even famous people; people with so many resources do not get better or even the same treatment I’ve gotten #and that truly sucks #especially in a country where mental health discussions are so taboo #South Korea has gotten better with it over the years through media awareness but it’s nowhere near where it should be #and Gong Yoo opening up about it including the nastier parts of depression is so brave #and I just wanna say I commend him for it #because to get on tv in front of so many people and KNOW you’ll most likely not be taken seriously is so courageous #especially when your career revolves around how people perceive you #he’s practically sacrificing his job to bring awareness and this is why I truly whole heartedly love this man speakng of raising awareness: the movie he’s being interviewed for here is “silenced”, a film he initiated production of. it’s based on real events that happened at a school for deaf children, where kids were sexually abused for years by their teachers. of the six rapists, two received prison sentences (and were out within a year), while the others were freed immediately because the statute of limitations had expired - and all were reinstated at the schoolgong yoo read about this a few years later and said to himself “what can i as an actor do to help,” and he made a movie about it. millions of people saw it and there was mass public outrage, and because of this movie the case was reopened, the school was shut down, the rapists got much harsher punishments, and a law named after the movie was passed that abolished the statute of limitations for all sex crimes against minors and disabled peoplewhen they were making the movie, gong yoo was convinced by the director he’d found to star as a teacher who tries to help the victims, but at first he was hesitant (because before this he’d only been in romcoms and he thought he lacked the acting ability to pull off the emotional depth required for this subject) but he eventually agreed because he wanted to use his fame to bring attention to the eventslike… i have nothing but admiration for this guy. gong yoo is incredible and i want the world to know -- source link