'It's Not Something to Hide': Park Myung-soo on Seeking Help for Depression

Park Myung-soo, one of South Korea's longest-running broadcasting personalities, used his radio platform on Sunday to share something unusually personal: he has visited a psychiatrist, more than once, when depression and sleeplessness got the better of him.

The admission came during the July 20 episode of Park Myung-soo's Radio Show on KBS Cool FM, where psychiatrist Lee Kyung-jun appeared as a guest on the program's "Legend Master" segment. The two were discussing the growing trend of Koreans turning to AI chatbots for emotional support and personal counseling, a phenomenon Lee confirmed he sees reflected in his own practice.

"At first I was worried," Lee said, describing how patients began arriving at his clinic armed with AI-generated analyses of their own mental state. Over time, though, he came to see it differently. People were using AI as a first step, then coming in for proper care. "I thought it might take my job," he said, "but I've come to see it as a useful supplement. The real consultation still has to happen in person."

Park then turned the conversation toward his own experience. "Sometimes when I'm feeling down or I can't sleep, I go see a doctor," he said. "The first time I went, I was nervous. I thought, 'If I walk in there, will people think I'm strange?' But I pushed the door open and there were fifteen people sitting in a row."

The image clearly stuck with him. "I thought, this many people? It was the first time I'd ever seen a psychiatric clinic that full. Everyone was lined up. And I realized: this isn't something to hide."

He closed with the kind of plain, practical framing that tends to cut through stigma better than any formal awareness campaign: "I think it helps to go in telling yourself that your brain caught a cold. That's all it is."

Mental health remains a sensitive subject in South Korea, where help-seeking has historically carried social stigma. Park's willingness to speak about it directly on a mainstream radio program, without framing it as a dramatic personal crisis, is exactly the sort of casual normalization that public health advocates have long argued is more effective than formal messaging. The full episode is available through KBS Cool FM.