Veteran Actor Kwon Seong-deok Remembered on Second Anniversary of Death After Cancer Battle

October 13 marks two years since veteran actor Kwon Seong-deok passed away. He died on October 13, 2024, after battling esophageal cancer. He was 84.

According to My Daily, Kwon was born in Naju in 1940 and began his acting career in the 1960s. He joined the National Theater Company of Korea in 1972, performing with the troupe for more than two decades and serving as its artistic director from 1994 to 1995.

Audiences knew him best as the face of former president Rhee Syngman. His striking resemblance to the late president led him to portray him in a string of landmark dramas, including SBS’s “Yain Era” (야인시대), MBC’s “Hero Era” (영웅시대), and KBS 1TV’s “Seoul 1945.”

Even while fighting cancer, he never fully left the stage. He was forced to withdraw from the 2016 play “Hamlet” when his illness was diagnosed, but returned to the theater in 2018 with “Romulus the Great” and appeared as the gravedigger in a 2022 production of “Hamlet.”

Over his lifetime, Kwon appeared in roughly 180 stage productions and won the Dong-A Theatre Award twice, along with the Korea Theater Arts Award, the Lee Hae-rang Theatre Award, and the Korea Art Critics Association’s Best Artist Award.