20 Friday

Friday, December 22, 2017 Lifestyle | Features

A Thai fan of the late South Korean band singer Kim Jong-Hyun puts up a note for him during a Family members and friends of late SHINee singer Kim Jong-Hyun carry out his coffin during a funeral at memorial held by the boyband’s Thai fanclub at a Buddhist temple in Bangkok yesterday. —AFP photos a hospital in Seoul. Star’s suicide highlights dark side of the K-pop dream ‘inevitable outcome’

nown for its ultra-competitive, sleep and privacy. Kim Se-Jeong, a pressure-cooker society, popular K-pop singer, confessed of KSouth Korea has one of the once sleeping a total of one hour for world’s highest suicide rates. And this four days. “I had to perform on stage, week the even higher stresses in the appear in TV shows and shoot ad country’s lucrative showbiz industry commercials all at the same time,” she took their toll on a K-pop superstar. told a television interviewer earlier Kim Jong-Hyun, a 27-year-old lead this year. singer of the hugely popular Daniel, of the popular boy SHINee, took his own life in a Seoul band Wanna One, admitted that his hotel room on Monday, with his death biggest wish was “having just one day sending shockwaves through fans of rest”. “For months ahead of my around the world. Five-member SHI- debut, I usually woke up four or five Nee were at the forefront of the “Ko- in the morning... practiced until two or rean Wave” that has seen South three in the morning the following Korean pop culture sweep Asia by day,” Kang said in a television inter- storm in the past decade and lap at view aired in August. He was “grate- shores even further afield. ful” to get a chance at fame, he The band has found fame and for- added-but the grueling schedule tune with multiple chart-topping al- eventually affected his health and the bums and sold-out concerts at home 21-year-old cancelled all public ap- and abroad since their debut in 2008. pearances earlier this month. The hearse carrying the body of late SHINee singer Kim Jong-Hyun leaves as fans watch at a hospital. But a grittier reality lies beneath the glitz and glamour of the K-pop scene- cutthroat competition, a lack of pri- vacy, online bullying and relentless public pressure to maintain a whole- some image at all times and at any cost. Many stars like Kim are picked up by agencies at a young age, usually in their early or mid-teens, their lives then taken over by grueling singing and dancing training, with the ever- present risk of falling foul of a cut- throat screening process. Holidays are rare and privacy an unaffordable luxury as many live with other band mates in dorm-like apart- ments provided by their agents, who dictate everything from music styles and diet regimen to mobile phone use-and normally impose dating bans. Family members and friends of late SHINee singer Kim Jong-Hyun cry as they carry Fans of late SHINee singer Kim Jong-Hyun cry as the hearse carrying the body of Many struggle with a constant lack of out his coffin during a funeral at a hospital in Seoul. Kim Jong-Hyun leaves from a hospital.