Taiwanese star Barbie Hsu, left, with her husband, Korean singer DJ Koo / Courtesy of Vogue Taiwan By Park Han-sol Barbie Hsu, Taiwanese actor and wife of Korean singer DJ Koo, has died of influenza-triggered pneumonia. She was 48. Her sister, Dee Hsu, confirmed the shocking news in a statement released Monday through her manager.
“During the Lunar New Year holiday, our family traveled to Japan. My dearest sister Barbie tragically passed away due to influenza-triggered pneumonia,” she wrote. “I am grateful to have been her sister in this lifetime — to have cared for and accompanied each other.
I will always be thankful for her and miss her forever.” Hsu first stepped into the spotlight at 17, debuting as a singer alongside her sister in 1994. The duo later became a beloved pair of television hosts.
In 2001, she skyrocketed to fame across the Mandarin-speaking world with her role in the hit drama “Meteor Garden,” the Taiwanese adaptation of the popular Japanese manga series. The story was also reimagined in Korea as the drama “Boys Over Flowers” in 2009. In Korea, the Taiwanese star’s name grabbed headlines in 2022 when it was announced that she would marry singer Koo Jun-yup, better known as DJ Koo of the male duo Clon.
The couple’s love story began two decades earlier when they first met at Hsu’s concert. They dated for a year in the late 1990s before parting ways, and in 2011, Hsu married Chinese businessman Wang Xiaofei. Following her divorce from W.