PARK YONG-HA. South Korean Actor-Singer Commits Suicide. Must the GOOD always die YOUNG?

PARK YONG-HA

(August 12, 1977 – June 30, 2010. R.I.P.)

Another talented SOUTH KOREAN artiste’s life being snuffed out at such an early stage?

He was only 33.

Such a shame really.

With his leading man’s good looks and adulation from frenzied fans all over ASIA, he certainly had everything going for him: a starry future ahead.

Friends and colleagues can attest that suicide would be the last thing lurking in the back of this actor’s mind.

He was often seen as sweet and cherubic. He was.

He wore the MONA LISA smile. He did.

He adorned a soulful and doleful persona with impish imploring eyes in all his television dramas.

He put on a bold front, even when all was not well.

On Wednesday June 30 past midnight, he spent his last hours massaging the legs of his cancer-stricken father, all along uttering “I am sorry, dad ….” many times. It was to be his last homage.

At 5.30 am, his mother went to his room and found him hanging from a mobile phone charger cable.

He was a filial son and was in true anguish when he witnessed his beloved father suffering from a terminal disease and was hapless to the situation.

You could say that he was an angel in disguise.

Yet what lied behind the facade?

What made him choose the path to self-demise?

Love? Career blues? Financial problems? Depression?

Nobody can fathom the real answers.

Specially not now.

Now, when a family member commits suicide, the entire family will surely plunge into confusion and grief.

Everybody values life.

Even a blade of grass or flower fights for the privilege of living.

When someone close to you voluntarily ends his life, your entire value system will be thrown into question.

Family members may be consumed with guilt, thinking that they should have seen the early signs that could have misled him to end his life.

PARK YONG-HA.

You are gone, but never forgotten.

May you live on as a STAR high up the firmament sparkling ever so brightly.

Here’s REUTERS full report:

PARK YONG-HA’s body was found by his mother with an electrical cord around his neck but there was no suicide note, The Korea Herald quoted police as reporting.

Park, 33, had recently devoted himself to nursing his ailing father who was in the final stages of stomach cancer. He was reported to have been struggling with sleep problems as well.

Park made his acting debut in 1992 but rose to fame in 2002 in the television drama “Winter Sonata”, winning a following in Japan and other nations in southeast Asia.

He also forged a career for himself as a singer in Japan where he put out 10 hit albums in the past five years and won four consecutive Japan Gold Disc Awards — a first for a Korean pop singer.

He was due to start filming in July for a Korean television drama called “Comrades, Almost a Love Story”, which is a remake of a popular 1996 Hong Kong film.

Park’s death comes after a string of suicides by South Korean celebrities in recent years.

Figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2009 show that South Korea’s suicide rate experienced a sharp increase from the late 1990s and South Korea now has the highest rate among OECD countries of around 22 deaths per 100,000 people.

LIFE IMITATING ART?

For sure sometimes, TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.