K-pop Singer, Sulli (Choi, Jin-ri)

Sulli (Choi, Jin-ri) is a K-pop singer, who committed suicide at the age of 25 on 14th October. Sulli started her career as a child actress back in 2005 and debuted as a member of the K-pop girl group F(x) in 2009. She was well known for speaking out against cyberbullying. She suffered from online attacks and rumors since 2014. This started after she started having a relationship with another K-pop singer. By going public with this relationship, it caused a flood of negative, "slut-shaming" comments on her.

She must have gotten trolled during her career as a member of the K-pop girl group F(x), but things got serious and vicious only after she was going public with her relation with another K-pop singer. This might sound questionable that she got online attacks only after she started a relationship with another K-pop singer. The cultural difference appear in this incident. This is a problem all over the world, but it is particularly acute in Korea, which had the highest rate of suicide of nations in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development as of 2016. Especially, women in the K-pop industry are particularly scrutinized and harassed accordingly online. It was not common in Korea where people express their struggles with mental health issues. Her main target of online abuse was the posts on her Instagram. People commented on how she dressed, and that it shouldn't be posting any of those sexy and outspoken images. She couldn't even pictures of her own relationship. To the haters' standards, the pictures that she posts on her Instagram were too revealing. Comments were all about the way she dresses, and her relationship: "You want to get naked so bad, huh?", "Who does this? Who takes pictures like this and posts them?", "Did you have to post this?". However, she maintained and kept the way she dressed opposing from what others say about her.

She never stopped and backed from what she was doing and thought as a women. Despite, she was outspoken about matters of cyberbullying. She never hid from discussing her struggles. She became a co-host of a talk show called The Night of Hate Comments in which celebrities share unpleasant comments they’ve received in June 2019. When Sulli started posting her true feelings on Instagram since the beginning of 2019, everyone assumed she was getting better. Also, her close friends said she looked happier and brighter earlier this year.

Sulli was one of the celebrities who started to express mental health issues. Slowly, the conversation in Korea around mental health is opening up, and it can surely be said start in K-pop industry, including Sulli lead the charge. Because she fought and spoke about cyberbullying and mental illness, thoughts on expressing mental issues and cyberbullying is getting to be common, when it was thought as not a right thing to do so in Korea.

It is a tragedy that a young and beautiful women had to end her life. However, this incident could become more public and awaken the haters from being cruel to celebrities anonymously. Members of Korea's National Assembly have already started working on a bill to tackle malicious comments online, working with the support of dozens of organizations and celebrities, many of whom have themselves experienced harassment online.