Cho Sung-min
| Cho Sung-min | |
| Hangul | 조성민 |
|---|---|
| Hanja | 趙成珉 |
| Revised Romanization | Jo Seongmin |
| McCune–Reischauer | Cho Sŏngmin |
Cho Sung-min (Hangul: 조성민; April 5, 1973 – January 6, 2013) was a South Korean professional baseball player with the Yomiuri Giants of Japan. He also received media attention for his much-publicized marriage and divorce from actress Choi Jin-sil.
Cho Sung-min dominated the baseball amateur league in the 1990s, and with his attractive looks and top-class pitching skills, he had many female fans in Korea and Japan. Cho joined Japan's Yomiuri Giants in 1996, and his best years as a pro-baseball player were 1997-1998 when he was named an All-Star pitcher for the Central League after racking up a record of seven wins, six losses and a 2.75 ERA in the first half of the 1998 season.
But after peaking his career soon went downhill, with a prolonged slump due to ankle injuries. He left the Yomiuri Giants in 2002. He returned to the Korean baseball league in 2005 to play for the Hanwha Eagles until October 2007, but instead of making an impressive comeback, he had to leave the team in 2007 with a disappointing performance. He briefly worked as a TV commentator, before joining the Doosan Bears in 2011 as a coach of one of their minor league teams. He refused to extend his contract with the club in November 2012 when his term ended.
Cho also tried his hand at various businesses including an unsuccessful bakery chain, and invested heavily into a baseball management company he had set up in 2008.
Cho's personal life was as turbulent as his career. He first met actress Choi Jin-sil on the set of a television show in 1998. At the time, Cho was a promising player and one of the league's all-star team members, while Choi had starred in dozens of films and television dramas in the 1980s and 90s and was dubbed the "nation's actress."
Cho and Choi married in a lavish wedding ceremony in 2000. A few years later, however, the couple grabbed headlines in Korea when they accused each other of being "unfaithful" and they divorced in August 2004 after Cho was arrested for beating his wife.
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