K-pop girl group Kara unveil new song Hello featuring late member Goo Hara

SEOUL – K-pop girl group Kara released a new song titled Hello on July 16.

It is from the group’s digital EP, I Do I Do, set to drop on July 24. It will feature the voices of all six members of the group, including the late K-pop idol Goo Hara.

Goo died by suicide in November 2019. She was a victim of online harassment; and also of blackmail and revenge porn by her former boyfriend, hairdresser Choi Jong-bum. She was 28.

“This song was supposed to be included in the group’s fourth album, Full Bloom, released in September 2013. But we are releasing it now with Goo Hara’s voice recorded in Korean when she was alive,” said Kara’s agency, RBW.

RBW did not explain why Hello was omitted from Kara’s 2013 release. The ballad is about the happiness of meeting someone new and the sadness of bidding farewell.

Goo had previously included the Japanese version of Hello on her solo release Midnight Queen in September 2019.

Several other members of Kara – like Han Seung-yeon, Park Gyu-ri, Kang Ji-young and Nicole Jung – posted the cover photo for the song on their Instagram accounts on July 16. The picture shows the hands of the remaining five members under a blue sky, holding on to one another to form a star.

Jung, 32, tagged Goo’s Instagram account in the empty space between the members’ hands.

She wrote: “We have always been together since we were very little girls. Now, we are as far as the distance between the moon and earth. You’re always floating in the same place like a moon. Hello, nice to see you again.”

Kara debuted in March 2007 under DSP Media, now a subsidiary of RBW, with their first album, The First Bloooooming. Their biggest hit is the upbeat pop song Mister (2010). In 2013, they became the first female K-pop group to perform at Japan’s Tokyo Dome.

Kara disbanded in January 2016, but made a comeback with the remaining five members in November 2022. They released Move Again, a special album marking the group’s 15th anniversary. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK