The late actor Choi Bul-am, who died recently, is being remembered less for his screen career than for the four decades he spent as a public face of child welfare in South Korea, according to reporting by 경기일보. A message left in the condolence book at his memorial has drawn wide attention: a visitor wrote that without help from the Green Umbrella Children's Foundation, and without the actor's support, that person might not be alive today. The newspaper reported the note in a column published Thursday.
경기일보 ties that sentiment to Choi's long association with the foundation, which began in 1981 — the same year he played Kim, the warm-hearted village chairman in MBC's drama Jeonwon Ilgi, who takes in an abandoned boy named Geumdong. According to the paper, Choi served as head of the foundation's national sponsorship committee for more than 40 years. It cites his stated belief that adults should act as large trees sheltering young ones, and describes him as someone who practiced that idea in his own life rather than only speaking about it.
Why it matters
The column uses Choi's death as a prompt to look at the work that outlasts a public figure. 경기일보 notes that the foundation's fundraising continues into the winter holiday season, with its "2026 Santa Expedition" running until February. The campaign is tied to a December 19 event — the 12th Sharing Angel Festival Santa Expedition — at the Gyeonggi Economic and Science Promotion Agency in Suwon, where organizers are recruiting "Green Santas" to fulfill modest but pressing wishes for children in vulnerable circumstances across the province.
The paper frames the appeal around a single case. A 12-year-old girl in Yongin, identified only by the pseudonym Ha-yun, has been diagnosed with moyamoya disease, a rare condition affecting the blood vessels in the brain, and is preparing for a second surgery. According to 경기일보, she worries more about her ill grandmother and her family's finances than about the treatment ahead. The paper describes her ambition to draw and study video editing so she can earn money, and says she has kept even a simple wish for an iPad to herself.
A legacy measured in successors
The column's argument is that the value of a prominent person's charitable work is carried forward by those who remain. It asks readers to consider becoming "santas" themselves — another set of large trees in the shade Choi spent his life creating — and suggests that small donations during the year-end season can serve as nourishment for children in the Gyeonggi region.
경기일보 does not report specific fundraising targets or totals for the campaign, and the column is written as an appeal rather than a news account of the foundation's finances.
Other outlets have covered the public response to Choi's death separately. Sports Kyunghyang reported that actress Kim Hye-soo, following the funeral, offered her first public remarks thanking those who came to see him off. Edaily reported on letters left at the memorial, including one from a person who said they might never have existed in this world without their teacher. Munhwa Ilbo published a piece on the absence of a father figure, and Chungcheong Maeil ran a contribution on what Choi left behind in his role as the foundation's national sponsorship chairman.
Choi's connection to the foundation is the thread running through that coverage. 경기일보's account places the start of his involvement in 1981 and describes it as uninterrupted for more than four decades — a span that made him one of the country's most recognizable advocates for children in care.
The foundation's Santa Expedition continues accepting participants ahead of the December 19 event in Suwon, with the campaign scheduled to run through February.
