Chapter 12: RIP Who?! - My K-Pop Experience

--- A few weeks later --- December 2017

“RIP Jonghyun ”

Uh??

“Why are people saying that? What a disgusting joke” I thought.

No, it wasn’t a joke.

Jonghyun, a member of the K-Pop group SHINEE had died.

Oh, how much I wept for someone I’ve never met and barely knew. Especially when hearing the cause of his passing:

Cause of death: Suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Possibly due to depression.

What?

Oh, how upset I was.

So young.

I knew that when depression gets a hold of you, it could lead to a path of no return.

But with what I was discovering about KPOP and with the dark things I already knew about Hollywood, the cause of death did not sit well with me.

I had heard a few stories of celebrities’ deaths labelled as suicide but later swapped with assassination...

Far too many questions but few answers such as “Oh, the signs were here and there” or “It happens” .

What could have triggered his depression? How toxic the environment around him could have been to have led him in that path?

I wasn’t there nor did I know him personally so, all I could do was speculate and pray for his loved ones.

Then, a week or so later, I found a forum thread...