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.

[3] He returned to the Korean baseball league in 2005 to play for the Hanwha Eagles until October 2007,[4] but instead of making an impressive comeback, he had to leave the team in 2007 with a disappointing performance.

[6] 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.

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.

[7] After Choi Jin-sil committed suicide by hanging in October 2008, Cho was embroiled in a dispute with her bereaved family as he sought custody of his son Hwan-hee and daughter Jun-hee.

According to investigators from the Suseo Police Station, on the night before his death, Cho drank three bottles of soju with his 40-year-old girlfriend, identified only by her surname Park, during which she told him she wanted to end their relationship.