Comedian Choi Seong-hoon (62), who received much love in the 1990s with the "Tarzan Song," shared his recent status.
Choi, who recently returned as "Gohyangman" (Hometown Man), appeared on MBN's "Special Scoop World" broadcast on Thursday and opened up about his 26-year hiatus.
Choi enjoyed his prime by traversing the three major broadcasters, but suddenly disappeared from television in the early 2000s. He revealed that he is currently living back and forth between Seoul and a friend's home in Yeonsan, Chungcheongnam-do, due to health issues.
Choi said he collapsed due to a cerebral infarction 10 years ago, stating, "Fortunately, it was not a cerebral hemorrhage. (If it had been) I would have become paralyzed." He went on to say that he subsequently suffered from various health problems, adding, "Once your health starts to deteriorate, other things keep coming. Shingles, diabetes, and asthma also came."
Fortunately, no major aftereffects remained from the cerebral infarction, but he revealed that returning to broadcasting was not easy as his health worsened due to extreme stress.
Subsequently, Choi met junior comedian and musical actor Hong Rok-ki and looked back on the past. He shared, "There are events on Children's Day, right? I traveled by helicopter. I went to Gyeongju and Geoje by helicopter too. It was quite something. I didn't know what fear of money was."
Regarding the reason he stopped broadcasting activities, Choi Seong-hoon said, "At that time, I was doing a karaoke business. It wasn't that I intentionally didn't do broadcasting; it became impossible for me to do so."
He added, "For example, I had an idea in the IT sector and developed it successfully. There were more than 100 people working on our side. Because I focused on this, I couldn't do both simultaneously. As time passed, (I couldn't continue broadcasting activities), and as a certain period went by, I lost confidence."
Choi started a business producing karaoke music sources, but this ended in frustration, and subsequent businesses also failed one after another. He confessed that he was deeply hurt by people during this process.
"When I deal with them for business, they keep asking about celebrities. At first, I made the atmosphere good by making them laugh a bit. But things didn't go well. Don't these people have preconceptions about me? There was an underlying attitude of 'what would a celebrity know,'" he said. "My face stiffened when meeting people. Looking back now, I learned a lot. I paid too much as tuition."
Choi debuted in 1991 on MBC's "Cheongchun Haengjingok" (Youth March) and was selected as an MBC special recruitment comedian the following year, in 1992.
in ENTERTAINMENT
