Park Boram, a breakout TV singing competition star who parlayed her powerful vocals into a decade in the K-pop industry, died Tuesday (April 11), according to a confirmation from her record label in Korea. Police are currently investigating the cause of death. She was 30.
Park’s agency Xanadu Entertainment shared the news of the singer-songwriter-actor’s sudden death on Friday (April 12) in Korea and said the cause of death was under investigation by police. The star was reportedly working on new music after releasing two new songs earlier this year.
Park Boram first impacted the K-pop industry at age 17, competing in the 2010 singing competition series Super Star K2 as a high school student with a love of R&B music and becoming one of the youngest finalists before finishing in eighth place. She made her official debut on the scene on Aug. 7, 2014, with the single “Beautiful,” featuring popular rapper Zico, which peaked at No. 2 on Korea’s local Gaon singles chart and won her an Artist of the Year honor for the chart’s top song of August at the 2014 Gaon Chart Music Awards. The track and music video was notably semi-autobiographical in detailing Park’s lengths to be “Beautiful,” including exercising and extreme dieting to lose a reported 70 pounds ahead of her debut. She released her first EP, Celepretty, in April 2015, which included “Beautiful” with its title track single, and she also secured another top 10 hit.
During her decade of singing, Park Boram was also known for her impactful contributions to Korean drama soundtracks like “Hyehwadong (or Sangmundong)” for the K-drama Reply 1988, which has boasted more than 16.5 million streams on Spotify since its 2015 release, or “Please Say Something Even Though I Know It’s a Lie” for the W soundtrack, which has nearly 12 million Spotify streams since 2016. Park collaborated with a range of different artists in Korea, including singer-songwriter Eric Nam, boy band member Park Kyung, balladeer Parc Jae Jung and rapper Lil Boi, and just this past February, she reunited with the winner of SuperStar K2, chart-topping vocalist Huh Gak, for their duet “I Hope.”
Following “I Hope,” Park Boram released the single “I Miss You” on April 3 as part of a project covering ’90s songs. It was previously shared that the star was working on an album celebrating her upcoming 10th anniversary for this summer.