Choi Bul-am

Choi Bul-am, born Choi Young-han, was a South Korean actor and television host whose career on stage, screen and radio spanned more than six decades. He became one of the most recognisable faces in Korean broadcasting, known above all for playing the steady, fatherly figures who anchored some of the country's longest running television programmes. Millions of viewers grew up watching him, which is why he was widely called the nation's actor and, in later years, the nation's father.

He was born in 1939, though his official records list 1940, in what was then Jemulpo in Incheon. After finishing high school in Seoul he studied at Sorabol College of Arts and later the Department of Theatre and Film at Hanyang University, training that pointed him toward directing before acting took over his career. He made his stage debut in 1959 in a production of Hamlet and joined the National Theatre Company in 1965, building his craft in Korean theatre before television offered a far larger audience.

He moved into broadcast acting in 1967 after being chosen in a special recruitment drive for television performers at what is now KBS, and he never really left the screen afterward. He became a household name as the steady police squad leader Park Young-han in the long running MBC drama Susabanjang, and then as the quietly authoritative village patriarch Chairman Kim in Jeonwon Ilgi, a rural drama that ran for more than two decades and became one of the touchstones of Korean television. From 2011 he hosted the KBS1 culture programme Hanguginui Bapsang, travelling the country to showcase traditional Korean food and the people who made it, a role that introduced him to a new generation of viewers and cemented his image as a warm, grandfatherly presence in Korean living rooms.

His health had been declining for some time. After lumbar spine surgery in March 2025 he had difficulty moving and stepped down from hosting Hanguginui Bapsang, the programme he had fronted for fourteen years, to focus on recovery. His condition did not improve as hoped, and in his final weeks he was admitted to a hospital in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, for treatment. South Korea's culture minister visited him there shortly before his death to wish him well, a visit that was widely reported once news of his passing broke.

Choi Bul-am died on the evening of 29 October 2026 at around 10 p.m., at the hospital in Gangseo-gu where he had been receiving inpatient care. He was 87. News of his death spread through the South Korean entertainment industry and broadcasting world on the morning of 30 October, prompting an outpouring of tributes that described him as a towering figure in Korean culture and the arts and as a performer whose seven decades of work had become part of the fabric of national life. No specific cause of death has been made public beyond the general decline in his health following his 2025 surgery, and details of a funeral or memorial service have not yet been announced.