Category: Новини

Moon Bin, a singer from South Korean boy band Astro, was found dead at his home in Seoul, his management agency said Thursday.

The 25-year-old was reportedly found by his manager who went to the singer’s home Wednesday evening because he wasn’t responding to contacts. Police are investigating his death but have so far found no signs of foul play, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. Officials at Seoul’s Gangnam district police station did not respond to calls for comment.

Moon Bin’s management agency, Fantagio, confirmed his death in a statement, saying that he “suddenly left us and became a star in the sky” and that fellow artists and company staff were mourning him with “very deep sadness and shock.”

Fantagio said Moon Bin’s funeral will be held “as quietly as possible,” with the attendance mostly limited to family, close friends and colleagues, based on the wishes of his relatives.

‘Always bright’

Moon Bin began his music career in 2016 as a member of the six-member boy band Astro, which debuted shortly after the singers appeared in a TV reality show. The group quickly found success in South Korea and Japan and was listed on Billboard’s top 10 list of new K-pop groups that year, with the magazine praising them for their “bright, synthpop sound that won over K-pop lovers from around the world.”

According to Billboard, Astro had seven albums on the magazine’s World Albums Chart with Moon Bin as a member, peaking at Number 5 in 2017 with “Dream Part.02.”

Fans flooded Moon Bin’s social media accounts with comments expressing grief and shock over his death, which came months after he renewed his contract with Fantagio along with four other Astro members.

“It’s hard to believe,” radio host Jang Seong-kyu wrote on Instagram. “We only met several times over broadcasts, but whenever we met, Moon Bin was always bright and expressed immense love for his family. I can’t imagine the pain he was going through.”

Moon Bin had also performed as a member of the duo Moonbin & Sanha with Astro bandmate Yoon San-ha. Indonesian event promoter Lumina Entertainment on Wednesday announced the cancellation of the duo’s performance in Jakarta due to “unforeseen circumstances beyond our control.”

Helix Publicity, a U.S.-based public relations agency that has represented Moonbin & Sanha, issued a statement on Twitter that it was “absolutely heartbroken.”

“Sending our thoughts, prayers, and deepest condolences to Moon Bin’s family, friends, loved ones, and to AROHA who always cheered for him and supported him,” it said, referring to the name that Astro’s fans call themselves.

Moon Bin entered the entertainment industry as a child actor and landed a role in the 2009 TV series “Boys Over Flowers,” which was hugely popular in Asia. His sister, Moon Sua, is also a K-pop artist, a member of the girl band Billlie.

Stars’ deaths prompt questions

Several South Korean singers and actors have died by suicide in recent years, which has touched off soul-searching about harsh competition in the fast-growing entertainment industry, an abusive online culture and failure by management to address the mental health problems of their stars.

Last week, 26-year-old actress Jung Chae-yull was found dead at her home. Her agency did not say what caused her sudden death.
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People worldwide have long been paying more for a premium cup of coffee. But what about a cost of over $100 for a cup? From Panama City, Panama, Oscar Sulbarán has the story, narrated by Cristina Caicedo Smit.
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Like most Facebook users, I am targeted by advertisements relating to my interests, particularly Native American.

So, when an ad popped up recently advertising a “Navajo Tufa Cast Corn Stalk Design Bracelet” cast from 55 grams of sterling silver, it got my attention, especially because its price was an implausible $6.48.

“Because of Black Friday, we produced … a lot of items, but we can’t sell them all … now we need to pay suppliers a lot of money,” is how the Cuterise website explained the low price.

The Scam Detector website rated Cuterise “Risky. Dubious. Perilous.” But curiosity got the best of me, so I accepted the risk and ordered the bracelet. While waiting for it to ship — if anything shipped at all — I decided to learn everything I could about it.

Tufa casting involves pouring molten silver into a mold carved out of soft volcanic stone found in New Mexico and Arizona. The Navajo have been using it to make jewelry since the mid-1800s.

Tufa is fragile and can crumble after a single casting. For this reason, artists often make a “master” using molten lead instead of silver that can be used to mold and cast multiple copies.

Genealogy of a bracelet

An image search on Google Lens turned up several matching bracelets, ranging in price from $300 to $900, but none were hallmarked by the maker.

I found the identical bracelet on the eBay auction site, which named the maker: Navajo Nation artist Eugene Mitchell. I tracked down his son Reggie Mitchell and sent him the photo of the bracelet I’d ordered. He confirmed that his father made that design in the 1970s.

“Our family has been making jewelry for a long time,” he said. “I’m the fifth generation, and my oldest son Bronson is the sixth.”

And for six generations, he added, his family has helped make Gallup, New Mexico, arts and crafts dealers rich.

“Back in the ‘70s, the FBI investigated Gallup because more 100-dollar bills were circulating there than in all of Las Vegas,” he said. “Gallup produced over 200 millionaires in that seven- to 10-year time period, and the source was Native American jewelry.”

I couldn’t find any data to confirm this, so I reached out to the Gallup McKinley County Chamber of Commerce.

“While the story has circulated in and around our community for years, it is more urban legend than truth,” Chamber of Commerce CEO Bill Lee responded via email. “What I will tell you is that even in today’s world of credit/debit cards, Gallup merchants still deal with very high volumes of cash.”

Reggie Mitchell remembers going with his father to Gallup, where he says a dealer “would always try to lowball the value” of his work.

“If it was two pieces of jewelry, they would give him money to make two more pieces and buy two meals,” he said. “And if they paid him, say, $100 for one piece, they’d turn around and sell it for six, seven, $800.”

It was on one of those trips to Gallup that Eugene Mitchell was robbed.

“My dad used to keep his lead masters in old coffee cans,” Mitchell said. “One day, he came out of a shop and discovered someone had broken his car window and taken the cans.”

Mitchell isn’t sure whether the master for the cornstalk bracelet was among the items stolen that day. He says his father found out later that New Mexico galleries were making rubber molds of the designs and selling copies “on the cheap.”

“And my dad would see them and say, ‘That’s my work, that’s my piece!’”

After that, the elder Mitchell cut out the middleman, and today, the family sells directly to their customers.

Bait and switch

I was surprised when Cuterise emailed me delivery tracking information. My order originated in Dongguan, China, a city dubbed “the world’s factory” and was now in transit to the U.S.

Clearly, I was going to receive something for my $6.48. But what? A plastic bracelet?

Ten days later, my order arrived. The package was flat and squishy. I tore it open and almost laughed. They’d sent me a pair of cheap stretch leggings printed to look like blue jeans – buttons, rivets and all.

My amusement faded as I thought about everything Reggie Mitchell told me. The family may not be using middlemen anymore, but Eugene Mitchell is still being exploited — this time by fraudsters halfway around the globe using photographs of a bracelet he made — and lost — 50 years ago.
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