Ha Young's Netflix Hit Hits Global #2 Amid Great-Grandfather Pro-Japanese Collaboration Controversy

Ha Young's Netflix series This Annoying Love is performing exactly as its pre-release buzz suggested it would, sitting at No. 2 on FlixPatrol's global TV show chart, but the conversation around the show has been pulled in a direction nobody expected, after the actor's great-grandfather was identified as Ahn Sang-ho, a physician whose pro-Japanese collaboration during Korea's colonial occupation is now under public scrutiny.

The story started innocuously enough. Appearing on the KBS 2TV variety program Rooftop Troublemakers, Ha Young (real name Ahn Ha-young, 33) spoke warmly about her family's medical legacy: four consecutive generations of doctors, beginning with a great-grandfather who opened the first Western medicine clinic in Hanyang and reportedly treated Emperor Gojong. It was the kind of family anecdote designed to charm, and it did, until viewers started connecting the dots.

Online speculation quickly identified her great-grandfather as Ahn Sang-ho, a physician who graduated from Jikei Medical School in Tokyo in 1902 and later became a subject of pro-Japanese collaboration allegations. Her agency, Bisters Entertainment, confirmed the identification, stating that Ahn Sang-ho is indeed Ha Young's great-grandfather, while adding that "some of the information circulating online does not reflect the facts."

What has drawn the sharpest attention is a December 10, 1918 interview published in Maeil Sinbo, the official gazette of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, a document now verifiable through the National Library of Korea. Ahn Sang-ho appeared in a feature titled Ilseon Donghwa-ui Gasjeong (一鮮同化의 가정), which translates roughly as "A Model Household of Japanese-Korean Assimilation." In the interview, he described no longer wearing Korean clothing, raising his children to speak only Japanese at home, and avoiding contact with other Koreans. The naeseon ilche ideology he was featured under, the doctrine that Koreans and Japanese were one people, was a cornerstone of pro-Japanese collaborationist thought during the occupation. He was also reportedly drawn into controversy the following year over allegations connected to the poisoning of Emperor Gojong.

Ha Young's agency has not addressed the 1918 interview directly, maintaining only that some details online are inaccurate. The ambiguity has kept the conversation simmering.

The timing has an almost scripted irony to it. Ha Young's co-star in This Annoying Love, Jung Hae-in, is a direct sixth-generation descendant of Jeong Yak-yong, the celebrated Joseon-era scholar and reformist thinker whose writings are considered among the most important in Korean intellectual history. Jung Hae-in has been open about his pride in that lineage and has made a habit of posting the Korean flag on Independence Movement Day (March 1st) each year. The two actors, playing lovers on screen, carry ancestral histories that sit at opposite ends of the colonial-era moral ledger.

None of which has stopped the show itself from finding a massive audience. This Annoying Love follows Go Eun-sae (Ha Young), an elite prosecutor who develops amnesia, and Jang Tae-ha (Jung Hae-in), a boxing coach who insists, rather conveniently, that he is her boyfriend. The setup leans into the genre's sweetest instincts, and the chemistry between the two leads delivers. Jung Hae-in has long carried the nickname "Rom-com King" in Korean entertainment circles, while Ha Young earned the affectionate label "Netflix's daughter" for a string of successful projects on the platform. Their pairing generated anticipation before a single frame aired.

After the show dropped on the 7th, Ha Young posted behind-the-scenes photos from the mountain filming location, captioning them "We met on the mountain." A video included in the post showed Jung Hae-in moving the camera around her from multiple angles, the kind of unguarded on-set moment that tends to send fan communities into a flurry. The contrast with the controversy swirling elsewhere online was hard to miss.

The questions around Ha Young's great-grandfather remain unresolved. The historical record, particularly the 1918 interview, is specific and available for anyone to read, but Ha Young herself was not alive during the events in question, and her agency's position that the full picture is more complicated deserves at least some space. What is clear is that the discourse is not going away anytime soon, not while the show keeps climbing the charts and the two leads keep drawing comparisons that the internet finds too striking to ignore.