Late K-Pop Star Goo Hara Featured on Kara’s New Single ‘Hello’

Goo Hara, whose death in 2019 shocked the South Korean music scene, appears on the new single from her former K-pop group Kara.

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The new track, a ballad titled “Hello,” was released Tuesday evening ahead of the reformed girl group’s upcoming digital single “I Do, I Do,” which is expected to premiere on July 25.

Goo (aka Hara, aka Koo Ha-ra) was a former member of the five-part girl group Kara from 2008 to 2015. After that, she launched a solo music career and accumulated a number of film and TV roles.

She died at the age of 28 in November 2019 , at the end of a year in which she had been blackmailed by a former boyfriend, attempted suicide and been dropped by her agency. She was also reported to have been heartbroken by the death of her friend and fellow K-pop star Sulli in October 2019.

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“Hello” was originally intended for inclusion in Kara’s fourth full-length album “Full Bloom” released in September 2013, but it was omitted for reasons unknown. Kara’s agency RBW told Korean media that the song has since been rearranged and remastered using Goo’s original voice recording from 2013. It also includes vocals by Hur Young-ji, who joined Kara in 2014.

“The song is now finished with the late Goo’s Korean vocals pre-recorded before her death, bringing all six members together,” the girl group’s agency, RBW, said Tuesday in a press release. (Goo had separately recorded a Japanese-language version of the song on her “Midnight Queen” single in 2019.)

“‘Hello’ is a ballad themed around the greeting ‘hello,’ which signifies both meeting and parting. The song captures the diverse meanings of the word ‘hello,’ including the joy of reunion and the sadness of farewell, and enhances the poignancy, with the members’ calm voices,” RBW added.

“I Do, I Do” is Kara’s first release in around two years, NME reports.

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