Ahn Ha-young ancestor row crashes Korean genealogy site — SkimNews
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- Ahn Ha-young came under public scrutiny after online users alleged her great-grandfather Ahn Sang-ho had ties to pro-Japanese collaborators during Japan's 1910–1945 colonial rule of Korea.
- The genealogy website (whose Korean name translates as "in search of roots") experienced repeated server crashes — overloaded for several hours on the evening of Aug 12 and going down for minutes at a time on Aug 13 — as users searched for records on Ahn's family lineage.
- The website catalogs 287 South Korean family lineages, including their origins and population sizes.
- Ahn had previously spoken on television about her ancestor opening Seoul's first Western-style clinic and treating Emperor Gojong (1852–1919).
- Ahn's agency initially denied the collaboration claims, which prompted further online scrutiny and historical record searches.
- On Aug 12, Ahn publicly apologized for being unaware of her family's past, just days before South Korea's Liberation Day on Aug 15.
Why it matters: The apology landed three days before South Korea's Liberation Day on Aug 15, a date that heightens public sensitivity to colonial-era collaboration. The genealogy site's repeated crashes show how a single celebrity ancestry dispute can rapidly mobilize mass crowdsourced historical inquiry into pro-Japanese collaborator records.
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