Kim Jong-Hyun was one of South Korea's most famous K-Pop stars. K-Pop is a genre of pop music that is native to South Korea - it is similar to Western pop music, with the difference being that Korean bands feature more band members and intricate dance moves. Kim's death comes as a surprise to his fans - he was only 27-years old at the time of his death, and he displayed no signs that something was going wrong with his life. Police are treating the case as a suicide.
The news of Kim Jong-Hyun death has shocked his fans around the world. The 27-year old singer and member of the superstar K-Pop band SHINee was found unconscious in his luxury apartment in Seoul - South Korea's capital and largest city.
Kim Jong-Hyun was a superstar in his native Korea. Apart from his solo career, he was also a member of a five-man K-Pop band called "SHINee." The band was commercially successful, and they even had several number one hits in South Korea.
While there is are official statements regarding this death (the police investigator is still ongoing), police rumors say that his death is treated as a suicide. No one knows what could have caused this celebrity singer to try to take away his own life.
The first person to contact police and report that something weird is going on with Kim was his sister. She called the police at 4:42PM local time. She thought her brother might have committed suicide due to the context of their last communication.
According to his sister, she called the police to report the possible suicide, due to a long string of messages that her brother sent to her. She said that his messages sounded like he was saying his last goodbye to her.
The police didn't exactly act in a quick manner - while they received reports of a possible suicide at 4:42 PM, they entered Kim's apartment and found his body at 6:10 PM - that is almost 2 hours from the time they received the first report.
Kim's sister posted on Twitter numerous messages regarding her brother's death. She said, "if I just could turn back time, I would be grateful to see Jonghyun's bright smiles again." She is obviously missing her brother a great deal.
There are thousands of Kim's fans that are currently writing out their thoughts and tributes on social media. Many of them said that Kim was a special kind of person - he was kind and warm, and always natural with his fans. He was a down-to-earth sort of person.
Alongside police, there were many emergency responders that got inside Kim's apartment. They did everything that was possible, before rushing him to the Konkuk University Hospital. Sadly, he was already in a state of cardiac arrest when he reached the hospital.
Kim's career started to really take off back in 2008. That was when his band started to get noticed by K-Pop music enthusiasts. Eventually, the band got popular enough, that they expanded in neighboring Japan. That wasn't as easy to do due to the prominence of many J-Pop bands.
Kim's career was still peaking at the time of his death. His band had just released their fifth Japanese album, and they had toured promoting the album across all the major cities in Japan. With enough time, they could have spread to other countries as well.
SHINee had such unique and breathtaking dance movies, that there were affectionately called "The Princes of K-Pop" by fans in Japan and South Korea. A lot of boy bands in Korea have exquisite dance moves, but SHINee were some of the best in their class.
Before his death, Kim was still active and recording various sessions and interviews for different TV channels. One of the last shows he did was a segment on a JTBC reality show called "Night Goblin." The episode was supposed to air on Christmas Eve.
The leading rumor regarding Kim's cause of death is carbon monoxide poisoning. There are multiple ways how a person can die from carbon monoxide poisoning, so more information regarding this will be available once police release their official report.
Some of his fans got worried regarding Kim's emotional health once he shared the lyrics of a very dark song on his Instagram account. It seems his fans were correct in their fears, as that Instagram post was Kim's last post before his death.
