Grieving mourners from South Korea and Japan bid farewell yesterday to a popular South Korean actor and singer who committed suicide earlier this week.
Park Yong-ha, 33, killed himself on Wednesday in distress over career and family pressures, the latest in a string of high-profile suicides in the Asian country.
His suicide stunned South Korea and neighboring Japan where he was one of the most popular South Korean celebrities. One of his fans is Japan’s former first lady, Akie Abe.
PHOTO: REUTERS
About 100 wailing fans — mostly Japanese women in black mourning attire — stood outside a hospital and surrounded the hearse carrying Park’s coffin to a cremation site, briefly preventing it from departing. One tearful fan held up a T-shirt expressing love for the late actor. Another reached out to touch the vehicle.
His ashes were later buried in a public cemetery in the town of Bundang just south of Seoul following a funeral ceremony.
Police have said Park had been under stress because he had to juggle management of his entertainment company and career while his father was fighting stomach cancer. The actor had been taking sleeping pills due to insomnia, police said, citing Park’s mother.
Park debuted in the late 1990s and starred in the 2002 television drama series Winter Sonata, which was also watched by fans in Japan and Southeast Asia. He held several concerts in Japan and released eight CDs there.
He was supposed to hold 12 concerts across Japan from yesterday to Aug. 22 and the tickets were sold out, according to Japanese record company Pony Canyon.
Abe’s blog displayed photos of Park, including one taken with him. She wrote in an entry that she had been looking forward to seeing his concert on July 17 and was shocked at the news of his death.
“Why did you die?” she wrote. “You must be free from pain now, and I sincerely send my condolences.”
South Korea has the highest suicide rate among the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant