“Luckily Krystal talked me out of it.”
Now a successful solo artist, Liu is still working
through the physical and emotional pain of her
past. “It took years for my body to rehabilitate,”
she says, adding that she has experienced anxiety
on a “different level” the past couple of years and
is now in therapy. “It’s to a point that I know that I
need to start taking care of my mental health. I’m
working hard every day to try to figure it out,” she
says. As she looks toward the future, Liu is proud of
her connection with her fans. “I’m extremely happy
to be part of someone’s healing process,” she says.
“All I want to do is keep working hard, and create
music that will brighten somebody’s day.” •showed the toll the online hate was
taking on her. “We grew up learning
that sticks and stones may break my
bones but words will never hurt me,
but words do hurt,” Liu says. “They
physically can hurt.”`
Sulli’s story is not uncommon.
Just a month after the star’s death,
her friend and fellow K-pop idol Goo
Hara—who was a member of the
band Kara and was outspoken when
it came to defending herself against
online harassment—was found dead
by suicide in her home at the age of- Less than two weeks later, actor and singer
Cha In-ha of the group Sur-
prise U was found dead in his
home at the age of 27. (His
death has not yet been ruled
a suicide.) And two years pri-
or, Jonghyun—the longtime
lead vocalist of the group
SHINee—died by suicide at
the age of 27 and left a note
that read: “The depression
that gnawed on me slowly has
finally engulfed me entirely.”
Liu knows firsthand the
dark side of the industry.
At the height of f(x)’s fame,
when she and bandmates
Sulli, Krystal, Victoria and
Luna were touring across
Asia and topping the South
Korean charts, Liu says
she was “going on fumes.” She explains: “You’d lit-
erally wake up, go to a job, go back to sleep in the
car and drive to the next job. We were grinding.”
The burden of fame and the quest for perfection
felt insurmountable. “We honestly talked more
about diets than music,” Liu says. “We were taught
to starve.” At the time, Liu says, she had “the worst
relationship with food,” sometimes drinking only
a can of Coca-Cola a day. The group’s “tomboy,”
Liu didn’t fit the mold of the typical doe-eyed,
feminine K-pop idol. She would get nasty com-
ments online from people about everything from
her sun-kissed California skin to her pixie cut,
like, ‘How is she going to get married with short
hair?’ “I didn’t realize how much these comments
actually hurt me,” she says. “I am now a lot more
open with my friends, and this actually helped
me out a lot.” Once, she even considered plastic
surgery. (Seoul, South Korea’s capital, has the
highest plastic-surgery rate per capita in the
world.)“I thought I really did need it,” Liu says.
If you or
someone you
know is
considering
suicide, please
contact the
National Suicide
Prevention
Lifeline at
1-800-273-TALK
(8255), text
“STRENGTH”
to the Crisis Text
Line at 741-741
or go to suicide
preventionlife
line.orgSUICIDE
PREVENTIONK-POP
BY THE
NUMBERS89
MILLION
fans across 113
countries in 2018,
according to the
Korea Foundation.$4.7 BILLION
brought to South
Korea’s economy
in 2016, according
to Bloomberg.March 30, 2020 67A Beloved Idol
Gone Too Soon
Family and band
members (right)
and fans (below)
mourned the death
of Jonghyun (above
with his SHINee
bandmates in 2013)
in December 2017.HAIR & MAKEUP: YUKINA MITSUHASHI/TATCHA AND ORIBE; CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: TOPPHOTO/AP; CHUNG SUNG-JUN/GETTY IMAGES; GDA/AP; HAN MYUNG- GU/WIREIMAGE; © YONHAP NEWS/NEWSCOM/ZUMAP13KPO4A.indd 67 FINAL 3/17/20 2:28 AM