BELLI DA MORIRE

South Korea is at the center of global pop culture: think of hits like Gangnam Style or global phenomena like Squid Game, the most watched Netflix series worldwide. Yet, we still know very little about this country and its ruthless star-system. Lee Hye-Ryeon, Lee Seo-hyun, Park Yong-ha, Kim Jonghyun and the list could go on... They are just some of the very young South Korean pop stars who have taken their own lives in recent years. The cause of these suicides, more than excesses like in the classic iconography of Western rockstars, is almost always depression. Because behind the glittering world of boy and girl bands built on a drawing board lies the dark side of the entertainment industry and, more generally, South Korean society: a country that tries in every way to sell abroad an image of itself as modern and progressive, but is actually still suffocated by a martial and aggressively moralistic culture.