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 South Korea has one of the world's highest rates of suicide,
which is the chief cause of death of those younger than 30, and
officials urged distraught young people to seek help.
"Copycat deaths after high-profile celebrities’ suicides are
very common," said Shin Eun-jung, an official of the Korea
Suicide Prevention Centre.
"The late K-pop singer was very popular among teenagers, who
tend to be particularly vulnerable to emotions and traumas."
Weeping, wailing and embracing one another, young men and women
dressed in grey and black lined the road as a hearse carrying
Kim's coffin left the hospital in the South Korean capital.
"I am so sad that I cannot even cry," an 18-year-old Chinese
fan, Chen Jialin, said at the funeral. "My heart aches so much."
Kim, 27, was found unconscious next to burning briquettes on a
frying pan in a serviced residence in Seoul on Monday, police
told Reuters.
He died later at a hospital, with officials calling his death an
apparent suicide.
HIGH SUICIDE RATES
South Korea's suicide rate of 24.1 per 100,000 residents in
2015, according to the latest data from the World Health
Organization, was more than double the global average of 10.7.
In 2016, the nation of 51 million reported an average of 36
suicides a day, the government has said.
"We closely monitor news outlets as well as the number of
suicides after celebrities’ deaths to prevent a suicide
contagion among the broader public," said a health ministry
official.
Studies have shown that high-profile suicides can not only
provoke more deaths, but also spur people to adopt similar
methods, Shin added.
The concerns spread to Thailand, where officials on Wednesday
urged vigilance for fans of Korean pop music who might be at
risk of committing suicide.
"Fans who are emotionally weak and depressed are at high risk
when it comes to imitating what their idols do," Samai
Sirithongthaworn, a Thai mental health official, told Reuters.
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DEMANDING LIFESTYLE
Kim spent nearly a decade as one of five members of SHINee, as well
as being a solo artist. His death was a massive blow to the fans
drawn to Korea's K-pop music worldwide.
A song by the group BTS had held a spot on the Billboard 200 list
for seven weeks as of the end of November.
But there were signs that Kim's glittering public life hid a darker
personal side.
Yonhap news agency said Kim sent a final message to his sister
asking her to "let me go".
A day after his death, a fellow musician published a note received
from Kim two weeks before.
In it, the singer said he was "broken from inside" and his doctor
had failed to tackle his depression, blaming Kim's unhappiness on
his personality instead.
"The depression that had been slowly eating me up finally devoured
me and I couldn’t defeat it," he wrote.
K-pop singers can face demanding lifestyles as they are often
groomed by music companies from an early age.
"As top stars gain popularity, they are very much deprived of
private life," said Seok Jeong-ho, a psychiatry professor at Gangnam
Severance Hospital.
"As mental problems cannot be seen, the importance of immediate
treatment is often neglected."
(Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang and Dahee Kim in SEOUL, and
Amy Lefevre in BANGKOK.; Writing by Karishma Singh and Josh Smith;
Editing by Nick Macfie and Clarence Fernandez)
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