Yoon Seok-hwa, a leading figure in South Korea's first generation of theater actors, died on Friday at the age of 69 after battling a brain tumor.

Sources in the theater community said Yoon died at 10 a.m. at Severance Hospital in Seoul with family members and close acquaintances at her side.

A memorial altar for Yoon will be set up at the hospital. 

Yoon had been in treatment since October 2022, when she underwent surgery for a malignant brain tumor. She had appeared in a production of Hamlet in July of the same year.

The Korean Actors Association had announced earlier Friday that Yoon had died at 9 p.m. the previous day. It retracted the statement a few hours later and apologized to Yoon's family and fans for the confusion it had caused.