Content warning: This article discusses mental health issues and suicide

The K-pop star looked drained. Goo Hara, one of South Korea’s most popular musical artists, gazed into the camera during an Instagram livestream. In a
fading voice, she read questions from fans watching from around the world.

“You going to work, fighting?” one asked.

In halting English, she gave a plaintive answer: “My life is always so fighting.”

By the time she climbed into bed at the end of the livestream in November 2019, she had reached a low point after a lifetime of struggle. As a child, she was abandoned by her parents. Her father at one point attempted suicide. After gruelling training, she debuted in a K-pop group at 17.

With the group, Kara, she found international fame, and Goo became a regular on Korean television, eventually anchoring her own reality series. But with celebrity came ravenous attacks on social media. Following a sordid legal fight with an ex-boyfriend, the harassment only intensified.

On November 23, 2019, less than a week after her Instagram appearance, she posted a photo of herself with the caption “Good night.”

The next day, she was found dead in her home in Seoul, South Korea.

Goo’s suicide, at the age of 28, shocked South Koreans.

“Her work as a K-pop star got a lot of love and attention from fans,” said Goo Ho-in, Goo’s older brother. But once she went solo, “she worked less and less, and she spent more and more time alone at home. So she received less and less love and attention from other people, and she struggled, because she is someone who needs a lot of love and attention.”

Goo Hara’s life was precarious almost from the start.

When she and her brother were in primary school, their mother left them to be raised by their father in the southwestern city of Gwangju. Not long after, Goo Ho-in found his father unconscious after a suicide attempt.

The siblings moved in with an aunt, an uncle and younger cousins, but they always felt like a burden, Goo said. Their father, who survived, left to work construction jobs around the country and visited his children only three or four times a year, Goo said. Through Goo, the father declined a request for an interview.

Goo Hara began to audition regularly in Seoul, and within two years, she was signed by an entertainment agency. Three months after she started official training, she debuted as one of five members of Kara, which became a top girl group.

A frequent guest on variety shows, she competed against other K-pop stars in boxing, arm wrestling or ssireum, a style of Korean folk wrestling. In 2014, she starred in her own reality TV show, Hara On & Off: The Gossip, which gave the illusion of peering into her private life.

After Kara disbanded in 2016, Goo released a solo album that did not sell well. But she still appeared regularly on TV variety shows. On one of them, in 2018, she met Choi Jong-beom, a hair stylist with a strong social media following in his own right. They began dating, and he moved in with her.

They broke up after three months. When Choi returned to Goo’s house to collect his belongings, he entered late at night while she slept.

Goo woke up, and the two began fighting, leaving them both scratched and bruised. Choi posted pictures of his injuries on social media and sent a message to a celebrity news outlet, suggesting he had a salacious tip about Goo.

He also sent Goo a sex video recorded on his phone and threatened to release it publicly, according to lawyers who represented Goo in a criminal lawsuit against Choi. Against the initial advice of those lawyers, who thought she would suffer a backlash, Goo decided to report to the police both the altercation and what she said was a blackmail attempt.

Before Goo was scheduled to testify in the criminal suit accusing Choi of blackmail, she posted a message on Instagram in May 2019.

“I am tired of pretending that I am happy and everything is OK,” she wrote. “I don’t want to cause concern among other people.” Five days later, another post appeared with a cryptic caption: “Goodbye.”

Her manager found her unconscious in her home and rushed her to the hospital.

In response to news about the fight with her ex-boyfriend, commenters online had criticised her “terrifying personality”. Even in mundane selfie posts, people called her “low quality”.

Choi was eventually found guilty of assault and intimidation. A judge sentenced him to one year in prison. Through his lawyer, he did not respond to requests for comment. A court in Seoul ruled in a separate lawsuit in 2022 by Goo Ho-in and his father that Choi must pay 78 million won (about NZ$96,000) in a settlement to the Goo family.

During this period, Goo Hara seemed to shut herself off from the few people she trusted.

“She was the kind of person who wouldn’t express her struggles very much, and she kept things inside,” said Choi Ran, a makeup artist who knew Goo from her earliest days in Kara. But in the months leading up to Goo’s death, she had isolated herself, and Choi Ran only read about her famous friend’s troubles in the news.

In November 2019, as Goo prepared for a tour in Japan, she seemed to rally, inviting members of her retinue for dinner, Choi Ran said.

After her tour, Goo went back to her home in Seoul.

The weekend she died, Goo Ho-in offered to visit, but his sister told him she was going to a party. A maid discovered Goo’s body on November 24. Police found a handwritten note “lamenting her personal situation” and declared the death a suicide.

Goo’s mother emerged from her long absence to claim half of her daughter’s estate, her legal share.

Goo Ho-in, his father and his aunt filed a lawsuit arguing that Goo’s mother should receive nothing. A judge reduced her share to 40 per cent, and Goo Ho-in filed a petition to change the law so that parents who abandoned their offspring in childhood would be banned from inheriting any part of their estate. The National Assembly has yet to act on what sponsors are calling the Goo Hara law.

Where to get help

If it is an emergency and you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

For counselling and support

Lifeline: Call 0800 543 354 or text 4357 (HELP)

Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)

Need to talk? Call or text 1737

Depression helpline: Call 0800 111 757 or text 4202

For children and young people

Youthline: Call 0800 376 633 or text 234

What’s Up: Call 0800 942 8787 (11am to 11pm) or webchat (11am to 10.30pm)

For help with specific issues

Alcohol and Drug Helpline: Call 0800 787 797

Anxiety Helpline: Call 0800 269 4389 (0800 ANXIETY)

OutLine: Call 0800 688 5463 (0800 OUTLINE) (6pm-9pm)

Safe to talk (sexual harm): Call 0800 044 334 or text 4334

All services are free and available 24/7 unless otherwise specified.

For more information and support, talk to your local doctor, hauora, community mental health team, or counselling service. The Mental Health Foundation has more helplines and service contacts on its website.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Motoko Rich and John Yoon

Photographs by: Woohae Cho

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES