Recently, it was revealed that the grandfather of actor Ha-young, whose great-grandfather has been embroiled in controversy over pro-Japanese activities, worked as a doctor at the National Sorokdo Hospital, where human rights abuses against Hansen's disease patients took place.

Ha-young's agency, Bisters Entertainment, stated yesterday (August 10) that "Ha-young's grandfather is indeed the late Ahn Boo-ho, former chair professor at the Catholic University of Korea College of Medicine."

According to the agency and other sources, Professor Ahn is known to have researched Hansen's disease at Sorokdo Hospital from 1949 to 1953–1954.

However, as this fact became known, historical facts regarding human rights violations—such as vasectomies, forced abortions, and forced labor inflicted on Hansen's disease patients at Sorokdo Hospital during the same period—are also drawing attention.

According to the "Fact-Finding Survey on the Human Rights of Hansen's Disease Patients" published by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea in 2005, Sorokdo Hospital performed vasectomies on 1,191 Hansen's disease patients between 1949 and 1958 during the tenure of Director Kim Sang-tae.

At the time, the hospital implemented a policy that permitted cohabitation only for Hansen's disease couples who underwent vasectomies.

In addition, experiments were conducted at Sorokdo Hospital during this period by inserting needles into patients' chests to extract Mycobacterium leprae from bone marrow, which records show caused extreme pain to the patients.

Some patients reportedly suffered sharp declines in health and died after the experiments.

Furthermore, patients' bodies were used for anatomical dissections without the consent of their bereaved families.

Body dissections continued until the 1960s, forced segregation until the 1970s, and abortions and vasectomies until the 1980s.

Although Hansen's disease has low infectivity and treatments were already invented in the 1940s, records show that human rights abuses against Hansen's disease patients at Sorokdo Hospital continued for a long time.

However, it has not been confirmed whether Ha-young's grandfather, Professor Ahn Boo-ho, was involved in these human rights violations.

No materials have been found to date to support Professor Ahn's specific duties or any connection to the human rights violations that occurred on Sorokdo at the time.

Ha-young has also recently faced difficulties over controversies surrounding her great-grandfather, Ahn Sang-ho, and his pro-Japanese activities.

Ahn Sang-ho graduated from the Tokyo Jikei-kai School of Medicine in Japan in 1902 and became the first Korean to obtain a Japanese medical license.

It has been confirmed that Ahn Sang-ho was introduced as an "exemplary case of Naisen-ittai" (Japan-Korea assimilation) in the Maeil Shinbo, a publication of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, and was also a member of the pro-Japanese organization Daejeong Jitsugyo Chinkokwai.

Daejeong Chinkokwai was a business organization established in November 1916 under the leadership of Min Yeong-gi, vice president of the Oriental Development Company and a pro-Japanese anti-national actor, with numerous pro-Japanese figures of the era—such as Lee Wan-yong, Cho Jung-eung, Song Byeong-jun, and Lee Yoon-yong—participating as members.

Reported by Kim Minjeong | Video by Choi Gang-san | Graphics by Yook Do-hyun | Produced by SBS Digital News