South Korean actor Lee Sang-bo was found dead at his home in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, on March 27, 2026. He was 43.
A family member discovered him at approximately 12:40 p.m. KST and contacted police.
The Pyeongtaek Police Station confirmed officers responded to the call and found no immediate signs of criminal involvement. The cause of death remains under investigation.
His agency, Korea Management Group (KMG), issued a statement the same day,
“We inform you that our actor Lee Sang-bo has died. Please understand that it is difficult to disclose the cause of death at the request of the bereaved family.”
KMG asked media and the public to refrain from coverage and visits to protect his family’s privacy. His wake was set up in Room 3 of Pyeongtaek Jungang Funeral Hall.
The funeral was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on March 29, with burial at Pyeongtaek City Memorial Park.
Following the announcement, all posts were deleted from Lee’s social media accounts.
Who Was Lee Sang-bo?
Lee Sang-bo was born in 1981 and made his acting debut in 2006 with the KBS2 drama The Invisible Man, also known as Invisible Man Choi Jang-su. For the first decade of his career, he worked under the stage name Lee Bo-hyun before returning to his birth name in 2016.
His nearly twenty years in the industry were spent primarily in supporting roles across Korean television and film, building a reputation for consistency and screen presence across a wide range of genres.
His television credits include Golden Era of Daughters-in-Law (2007), Bad Love (2007-2008), Man Who Dies to Live (2017), Rugal (2020), Private Lives (2020), Miss Monte-Cristo (2021), and The Elegant Empire (2023-2024).
On film, he appeared in the 2013 spy action thriller Secretly, Greatly, one of the most commercially successful Korean films of that year, starring Kim Soo-hyun, as well as Mephisto (2020).
He also appeared in a Japanese production, Kisarazu Cat’s Eye: World Series.
Miss Monte-Cristo in 2021 marked a turning point: it was the first time he had been cast in a lead role after fifteen years working in supporting parts.
The drama was a Korean adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, and his performance in it drew attention to how much range he had accumulated over years of secondary roles.
He followed it with The Elegant Empire, a KBS2 drama that ran from 2023 into 2024.
In January 2025, he signed an exclusive contract with Korea Management Group and was in the process of reviewing new projects when he died.
The 2022 Incident And What Lee Said About It Publicly
The most discussed chapter of Lee Sang-bo’s public life began in September 2022, and the full context behind it explains a great deal about the years that followed.
Police were dispatched after receiving a report that a man appeared to be intoxicated and was running erratically in the street.
Officers detained Lee. A field drug reagent test returned a positive result for morphine. He was arrested and the news spread rapidly through Korean entertainment media, labeling him as a drug suspect.
Lee immediately denied the allegations. He said the positive result was caused by the antidepressants and tranquilizers he had been prescribed for a diagnosed depression and panic disorder.
His physician provided a medical certificate confirming the prescriptions. The National Forensic Service conducted a formal analysis and found no illegal substances in his system.
Police reviewed the medical documentation and closed the case without charges. He was released without indictment.
But the clarification came after the damage, his name had been connected to drug accusations in headlines, and the stigma within South Korean entertainment culture made re-establishing himself significantly harder than simply being cleared by investigators.
What Lee then did was tell the story himself, publicly and in detail.
In October 2022, he appeared on CBS Radio’s Kim Hyun Jung’s News Show and explained the circumstances that led to the incident. He had, he said, taken a can of beer along with his usual medication, an error in judgment he acknowledged, because of what he described as “longing for my family and the loneliness of being alone.”
He posted a statement on social media that went further, “I had no family to spend the holidays with. Burying the people I love in my heart was never easy. So I relied more on sedatives, and now I have become a weak person who inevitably becomes depressed without them.”
The Family He Lost
The detail that reframes everything about Lee Sang-bo’s story is this: by the time he was detained in September 2022, he was the only surviving member of his immediate family.
Lee had lost his older sister, his father, who died suddenly in a traffic accident, and his mother, who died after battling lung cancer, in what reporting described as successive losses that arrived within a relatively short period of time.
He was the last of four people in his family unit.
In November 2022, he spoke about this directly on the Channel S program Charging Sisters. “There were just four people in my family,” he said. He described his father’s sudden death in an accident and his mother’s death from lung cancer. He spoke about what it was like to stand at his mother’s funeral,
“It was a three-day funeral, and to keep my promise to my mother, I didn’t shed a single tear in front of anyone. I cried only when no one was around because I worried my mother in the portrait would be too sad if she saw me break down.”
The antidepressants and tranquilizers he had been taking, the medication that produced the false positive and led to his arrest, were prescribed in the context of processing those losses.
His struggle with depression and panic disorder was not incidental to the 2022 incident. It was the core of it.
Lee’s Return To Acting
After the case was formally closed and his name cleared, Lee returned to acting. The Elegant Empire gave him steady work through 2023 and into 2024.
He signed with KMG in January 2025, describing himself as ready for a comeback and actively reviewing projects.
He had said publicly after being cleared that he intended to “act more openly” and move past the stigma attached to the false accusation.
He expressed a determination to continue, to not let the year he lost define the rest of his career.
The funeral was held privately at the family’s request. The wake at Pyeongtaek Jungang Funeral Hall was not open to media.
KMG asked for the family’s privacy to be respected. His social media, cleared of all content after his death was announced, left no further public record.
Lee Sang-bo spent two decades building a career that kept expanding in scope, lost the entirety of his immediate family, survived one of the more damaging false accusations that South Korean entertainment culture can generate, came back from it, and was preparing for what came next when he died.
He was 43.
If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by calling or texting 988.
