CELEBRITY WITH A CAUSE
MY NAME IS YOON MI LEE, and I am an actress in Korea. I launched my career after taking part in the programme “Super Elite Model Korea” in 1998. I have now been in entertainment for 18 years, appearing in TV series, films, advertisements, and working as a singer and musical actress. I am also a mother of two beloved daughters and a wife of a famous composer and TV show host.
As a couple, we love children and so support many kids in Korea who are sick or have been abandoned. We also fund projects helping children in desperate need in other countries. Today we can see that many problems facing children around the world are related to environmental issues.
We now know that none of us has a very healthy future without the ocean. Yet, in the past, I never really gave serious attention to the marine environment other than just as a nice place for a vacation.
My first encounter with the photographer Y.Zin was shooting for a TV show about 10 years ago. She showed me underwater images and told me stories of the oceans she had visited on assignment. She suggested I try scuba diving, and so together we made a few trips to Saipan.
My first diving experience was all hard work. I found it hard to carry all the heavy equipment and hard to fight my way into the wetsuit. I remember sitting on the boat before getting into the water and feeling overwhelmed. Luckily, Y.Zin was there. She checked everything, and encouraged me not to be too nervous.
As soon as I dropped under the water, all I could say was, “Wow!” All those coral reefs, too many fish to count, caves and caverns. It was like another dimension, like a work of art. I never imagined it could be this beautiful.
That was the moment I cemented by relationship with the water. Now, whenever I have free time, I want to go diving; I can’t stop thinking about what's happening in the water.
Now I have a different perspective. I used to care most about the beautiful and mysterious to be found underwater, but now I care more about the treatment of our oceans, about how disrespectful and neglectful we are towards them: Our oceans are suffering, contaminated with oil and trash. Fish are dying after eating plastics. Our beaches are choked with garbage. I didn’t realise it before, but now I see the seas are in pain.
I used to only be interested in articles about me, and about the world of entertainment and fashion, but these days I see the ecocide we are committing, polluting the oceans, filling the water with heavy metals, mass dieoffs of pilot whales, illegal poaching...