Musicians Recently Lost a Member of Their Family and Few Noticed
Another pop star dies and leaves behind questions
K-Pop star Park Bo-Ram died tragically and suddenly at the age of 30 on April 11th, 2024, in Seoul, Korea.
April 11th is my oldest brother’s birthday. When I researched Bo-Ram, watching her music videos and reading about her story, I started to feel as if I had lost a member of my family. Musicians are like a family, and we have lost someone.
Performing artists know well the pressures of the industry and the often brutally competitive world that they’re forced to sink or swim within. Artists are frequently encouraged and even coerced towards becoming commodifications rather than people, letting go of their previous selves in order to become a commercialized image others will adore.
When I hear stories of vulnerable people losing their lives, part of me feels like I wish I could’ve been there for them, to save them. I immediately think of what wasn’t done, the people who weren’t there to stop it from happening, basically the way those closest to the person who passed would feel about the situation.
Based on my own history of substance abuse disorders and mental illness, I think that it could’ve been me.
It’s saddening to think of all the people who will leave us too soon, sometimes isolated and in danger, living a troubled life hidden or distorted by the world of fame. Fame completely changes the landscape because it then becomes a question of what the price is, what will be sacrificed, what power and control does the person lose over their own life in exchange for fame, what is it that we don’t see, what’s the underlying reality?
Overall, we don’t necessarily see the toll that what’s toxic about an industry can take on its participants unless we look at individual cases like this one, after it’s already too late.
What we see of a person is often not their inner reality. In Park Bo-Ram’s case, her sudden, seemingly random death by heart attack at the age of 30 came without warning. But deeper analysis reveals her struggles with extreme dieting and the lifestyle pressures associated with the K-Pop world that many of us could only guess at.
On some unflinching level, it’s a tragic and dystopian story of a star who was indirectly swallowed up by a cannibalistic industry. TV shows selling dreams and promises of stardom pick their winners, and their lives are turned upside down by their ambitions to fulfill their dreams, and they don’t always survive.
Over a dozen K-Pop stars like Park Bo-Ram have died in recent decades by suicide and other tragic causes. Dreams of fame take on a sinister aura when realizing the continuously oppressive climate that any aspiring star must face.
When I look at Park Bo-Ram’s story, I see a beautiful, talented young star, being eaten alive by the industry. It’s a dark view — but it’s true. She was barely seventeen when awarded eighth place on the show SuperStar K2. Shortly after initiating her career opportunities from that point onward, she lost 70 pounds, presumably to fit in with the frankly anorexic image standard set by the industry.
In an industry obsessed with stars having to persevere through the pressures of online trolling, rumors, celebrity lifestyles promoting extreme diets and substance use, low wages, harassment, vampiric contracts, and otherwise being taken advantage of, it’s blatantly obvious that we are looking at toxicity on a massive level.
Innocent young stars are essentially being sacrificed for a greedy fame machine that pushes people too hard and forces them to conform to heartless and sick market demands. Famous people aren’t being treated like people at all, and many of them are children when they start out on this track.
So it’s not like they’re just people and this is their life and they’re responsible for it and that’s that. Sure, there’s some of that at play, we are all responsible for our own lives, but I think a more sympathetic view is appropriate, which first blames the essential corruption found in the industry rather than the individuals themselves for the stress and danger it causes them.
Many premature deaths can be stopped by taking care of the people in our lives and encouraging them to take care of themselves. This includes everything from responsible medication and substance use to healthy diet and exercise to communication and mental health transparency. And it should happen on a macro-scale with entire industries in order to protect workers.
Exactly how this plays out isn’t the subject of this article, but I think it goes without saying that there’s something wrong with this picture, that there’s a problem with the industry as it is, when we see this kind of fate for young stars.
Whether we are stars or not, we are people. Health, both mental and physical, should be prioritized and promoted on a widespread scale, and it’s our responsibility to look out for others and the values we hold dear in our own lives. We are all entitled to a long and happy life and should do everything we can to facilitate that for others in our sphere of influence.
Because I’m a musician, it saddens me deeply, as with the performing arts in particular, there is often such a pure love of performing and making music that to be famous for it becomes a cherished dream, truly coveted beyond belief.
To see other factors like image taking over to such an extreme degree are a corruption of what really matters. Music and art isn’t the only product on display here. In an industry dominated by objectification and superficial plasticity, the emphasis is less and less on the music itself and more and more on image.
This will probably seem like old news by now, and that’s the point. We need to be better to our musicians. Value them for their individual contributions to music rather than becoming just another packaged product to be sold. Without authentically created and respected music, our culture would be garbage. Don’t you agree?
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